She Started to Believe in Herself

She Started to Believe in HerselfCarissa is a mixed media artist whose work explores healing, self discovery, and resilience. Her practice blends painting, collage, and text to express complex emotional works shaped by personal experience. Having supported a former partner and son through severe mental health struggles, Carissa's art has become a space for processing grief and honouring the unspoken. Through layered textures and symbology forms, she invites viewers to explore love,

This piece invites viewers to see the natural world differently: as something personal

The act of connecting to others through her work has been an unexpected

or beaten down and defeated

and abundance

Through this work

better known as Apo Whang-od

not to fright

Beauty can still reveal itself from the shadows

I created this artwork as a parody of how 'posh' the appearance and behaviour of the Bush Stone Curlew (Burhinus grallarius) is

lively bars

A classic Indo-Western vase - shaped by colonisation yet tied to Goan heritage - is repaired with gold and repurposed to hold brushes where flowers might bloom

Through soft brushstrokes and gentle colours