the flowers that fed the dead: a story of grief, growth, and paint
An intimate look at the emotional and technical process behind the first painting of the Spring Art Collection Series (2025): the flowers that fed the dead.
Hello, thank you so much for being here. My name is Vita and I'm an artist but also more than that. I'm someone constantly learning how to listen and how to express what sometimes feels too complex for words.
Today, I’m sharing the process behind a painting that reignited an artistic spark I had forgotten all about. It rekindled a part of me I had once buried beneath the noise of survival.
It's the first painting from the Sentimental Hummingbird's "Spring Art Collection Series" and I call it the flowers that fed the dead.
If you're new here and aren't as familiar, the Sentimental Hummingbird is my art studio; my creative home. It's a space where I connect and return to myself. It's where I decided, "Hell yeah I want to create three 20 x 16 paintings for the Spring season”,
Now this video is a time-lapse (click here to watch the YouTube video instead), yes, but it's also an invitation; a window; a way for me to bring you into the emotional, spiritual, and artistic world behind these paintings, starting with this first one.
I want to share what this piece meant to me as I painted it. I want to explore what this whole collection is really about. And most importantly, I want to highlight the beauty that can be found in life after death.
I’ll talk through the inspiration, the emotional weight, the technical process, and what I’ve taken away from creating this piece.
So settle in as we dive deep. Whether you're multitasking, sitting quietly, or somewhere in between, I hope this video becomes a space for reflection. A soft landing. A place to just be.
What is the "Spring Art Collection Series"?
This spring collection came from a place of emotional transition and reflection; a liminal and simultaneously chaotic place with an unspoken reckoning.
I started dreaming it all up during a time when I felt like I was coming back to life, but slowly, and not without resistance. It was the kind of season where inner turmoil doesn’t just knock, it floods every room in the house.
Sometimes I find it a little strange the way that the deepest pain can birth the most sacred forms of creation. There’s something about hitting rock bottom that makes you question and re-learn how to breathe, how to move, and how to see the world again.
This is the kind of perspective where you actually alchemize that inner turmoil and self destruction, turning the "holy shit this is really bad and painful" into something new and tangible, like a painting.
Before 2025, I found myself lost in a darkness of my own making. My mental health was unstable and fragile. I felt completely untethered and disconnected from myself. Mentally, emotionally, I wasn’t just burned out: I was barely present.
I've talked about this chapter of my life before; I’ve spoken before about the spirals I found myself in. About the fear that kept me paralyzed, the shame that felt ingrained into my skin, and the chaos that ruled my mind, but it's worth revisiting. It holds a significant place in my story and taught me a whole lot. I try my best now to channel those lessons into my creative work, allowing them to fuel and shape my artistry. I'm not saying that the trauma that was endured was necessary to become the artist I am today, but what I chose to do with that pain, rather, is where the story truly begins to bloom.
I used to be consumed by fear, anxiety, self loathing and a constant inability to make decisions. My life felt like it was unraveling in the worst possible ways, all because I couldn't let go. I resisted the flow and clinged to control with everything I had, becoming terrified of the unknown. However, this desperate grip, only made things worse, sending me down a long road of self sabotage.
Then, something began to shift between January and March of 2025. It was surreal. Something stirred in me. I completed an intensive outpatient therapy program, I returned to my art and began painting again, I launched the Sentimental Hummingbird. These months felt like a turning point; the final stretch before the astrological new year and the reset of the seasonal cycle. And no, it wasn’t some big cinematic transformation. It was slow. Uneven. Often painful. But it was real.
I could feel that spring was coming even when it was grey and 50 degrees outside, and oh my god, how I missed that feeling. I used to pray for the day when life would feel simple again, when routines would return and peace wouldn't feel so far away. Things weren't perfect. My healing journey was far from over. But I was beginning to understand what it truly meant to move forward.
That’s where this series comes from. Not from perfection, but from movement. From choosing to keep walking, even while grieving.
I wanted to mark this new chapter with a challenge: a Spring Art Collection Series. Now, I know three paintings might not sound like a lot, but I’d never worked on large canvases before, so it felt intimidating. Still, I believed in myself. As I record this voiceover (click here to watch the YouTube video instead), I’ve completed two out of the three pieces, and I'm going to begin the third and final painting soon.
As I worked, I started reflecting on how spring is often seen as this joyful, colorful season, this bright, cheerful time and it definitely can be, but it can also be messy. Things don’t bloom overnight. There's mud. There's rot. There’s decay happening beneath the surface. Dead things don't vanish overnight. They decompose. They become the soil. And in that soil, old things have to fall away to make space for what’s new; old versions of ourselves, mistakes we thought we'd never recover from. In that tension, something raw and honest begins to form.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about cycles as I've marked the start of breaking my own outdated ones. I've been thinking of emotional and spiritual cycles, The ways we revisit certain lessons, even after we thought we’d outgrown them. How healing rarely looks the way we imagined. And how, sometimes, what feels like an ending is actually the start of something new.
This whole collection is me processing that truth: that growth and grief aren’t opposites, they often walk side by side. It's about that space between letting go and becoming something new. Between I'm not okay but I will be.
That’s the heart of this series: every piece lives in that quiet space between death and rebirth.
About "the flowers that fed the dead"
I started painting “the flowers that fed the dead” on a day when my mental health was at a low point. Everything felt too heavy.
It was difficult to see past the weight of shame, regret, and fear. It all felt so overwhelming, like so much negativity had taken over everything in my mind. Well, almost everything. The one thing that I did feel capable of doing was picking up a paintbrush. Not to create something perfect, but just… something. Anything.
I knew I could at least paint. Not well, not confidently but I could at the very least put color on canvas.
I had no idea what this piece would become. I had no vision or plan really, just emotion. Maybe that’s why it ended up being something I’m genuinely proud of and why it means so much.
In the early stages, I painted phrases and images; raw, emotional marks. I painted words, like real words. They eventually disappeared beneath the layers so you won’t see them in the final image, but they’re still there, blended within the paint, part of the truth. It's like they're still part of the paintings DNA.
As the painting unfolded, I began to intuitively paint flowers and then came a single, anchoring thought: What if beauty could be found through the darkest places? What if the grief we carry could plant a seed, and from that seed, something holy grows? What if, after wandering through a cold, terrifying hallway, convinced it's the end, you discover the one thing that reignites your spirit and brings you back to life? After all, a seed begins in darkness. It waits. It listens. Only when it’s ready does it rise, stretching upward, breaking through the soil. Here bloom the flowers that fed the dead, waiting for you, as you crawl toward your own rebirth.
The name came to me after the painting. I couldn’t shake it. It stuck with me. There was something about it that felt spiritual. Like a prayer disguised as a painting.
I imagined a field of flowers thriving on ground soaked with memory. With grief. With history. And I thought, what if this wasn’t morbid? What if it was sacred?
This painting is kind of a tribute. To loss, to change, to the people and parts of ourselves we’ve had to let go of. It’s about how nothing really disappears, it just transforms.
The idea that the flowers fed the dead felt respectful. Like honoring what came before. Recognizing that we don’t move forward without carrying pieces of our past with us. Even if those pieces are no longer visible.
The Painting Process
The process for this piece was slow, intentionally so, for the most part. It took time to come together, and I let it. At one point, I hit a two-week stretch of creative block, but even then, I knew I didn’t want to force anything. I needed to feel my way through it.
That said, I do wish it hadn’t taken quite so long, just so that the final two pieces wouldn’t feel as rushed. My goal was to finish everything before the end of the spring season, and so far I am on track. There's just a bit of anxiety to complete it but I know I can do this.
Anyway, like I mentioned with the first painting, I didn’t know what direction to take at first, I just started by playing with colors. Eventually, I landed on a dark, moody burgundy background, one of my favorite colors. What I loved most, though, was everything layered beneath it: words I was afraid to say out loud, colors blending and bleeding into each other.
I didn’t want the canvas to feel clean or untouched.
I wanted it to feel lived in.
The flowers took shape slowly, almost stubbornly and they quickly became tedious to work on. I was using a white paint that was fairly transparent and required multiple layers to achieve the exact shade and depth I was aiming for. Building in the right shadows took time and patience.
There were moments when I overdid the shadows, and others when there just wasn’t enough. Finding that delicate balance between too much and too little was challenging, but eventually, I found it. I managed to bring the piece to life in the way I had hoped.
This is one of the reasons this piece took longer to finish than I expected, but the extra time allowed me to find the balance and depth it truly needed.
I also would like to mention that these flowers were definitely inspired by Alice in Wonderland which I think is pretty cool.
The door in the upper right corner was a bit challenging, but with reference images to guide me, I think it turned out pretty well.
When it came to painting the flower stems, I was nervous to add green at first, but I’m really glad I trusted my gut and went for it.
In conclusion, there were moments I hated it. Moments where I thought I ruined it, but I’ve learned to lean into those parts of the process. That tension is part of the story. It’s like life, sometimes the ugliest parts end up being the ones that teach us the most.
Personal Reflections
Looking back, this painting ended up teaching me far more than I expected.
I’ve always struggled with letting go, whether it’s people, phases of life, or parts of myself I’ve outgrown. For the longest time, I believed that holding on tightly was the only way to maintain control, to keep things from slipping away. But this painting gently challenged that fear. It reminded me that letting go isn’t about losing control; it’s about making space; space for freedom, for healing, and for growth. It’s the very act that allows new life to begin.
Each flower in this piece carries a fragment of that lesson. Every delicate petal, every watchful eye, every twisting leaf holds a whisper of release and renewal.
This painting is a quiet unearthing. It doesn’t shout or demand your attention. Instead, it invites you to slow down, to sit with it, to notice the subtle shifts beneath the surface. It asks you to feel the tension and tenderness in the space between endings and beginnings.
In its stillness, it holds the power to help you rise from the dead; reborn, transformed, and ready to bloom again.
Closing Thoughts
Thank you so much for watching this video (click here to watch the YouTube video instead), for listening, for sitting with me and this piece.
“the flowers that fed the dead” is more than just the first painting in this series. It’s the foundation. It’s where the whole collection begins. It’s a chapter. A monument. A love letter to grief and the growth that follows.
I’ll be sharing the process of the other two paintings from the Spring collection in the coming weeks, each one with its own story, its own energy, it's own struggle. But they do connect through this idea of transformation. They all come from the same place: that space between seasons. Between letting go and blooming again.
If you felt something while watching, anything at all, I’d love to hear about it. What did this piece bring up for you? What part of the process spoke to you most? Drop a comment, or reach out. I genuinely want this space to feel like a conversation, not just me talking at you, but something we create together.
If you haven’t already, consider subscribing (click here to watch the YouTube video instead). It means a lot. It helps me keep doing this. Sharing. Creating. Healing.
Wherever you are on your journey, if you're blooming, or breaking, or somewhere in between, please know this: you are allowed to grow in strange, unexpected, beautiful ways. You are allowed to take your time and to begin again.
The soil remembers.
And when you’re ready, the flowers will be waiting.
I hope you have a beautiful day and I'll see you soon.
