Orielle Anaïs (Santa Barbara, CA) is a multimedia artist working in painting, sculpture, and public art.

Her practice explores the body as an instrument, capturing suspended moments that reveal a fleeting choreography. Figures emerge as active forces of rhythm and sensation.

Through both intimate and large-scale work, Orielle explores how rhythm connects the human body and the natural world. Her work moves fluidly between the intimate and the monumental, tracing rhythm as the connective tissue between body and world.

In large-scale works such as Hope Grows Wild (15 × 50 ft mural, Santa Barbara), she brings visibility to the fragile and vital relationships that sustain life, merging beauty with environmental urgency. Her public work creates spaces of reverence and rebellion, where the presence of nature in an urban environment beckons us to notice our inseparability from the living world.
Fine art and public art are two sides of the same coin - on canvas or city wall, both trace the rhythms connecting the inner body and outer environment.
In her studio, this exploration becomes deeply personal.

That same rhythm animates my studio practice.
When I photograph a model, I’m pursuing the moment between movements - the figure seems suspended in candid expression, akin to improvisational dance.
I use color as an atmosphere, pulling the viewer into the emotional state of the figure. In my oil paintings, feeling and sensation always come before narrative. The buttery drag of oil paint across the canvas takes on its own life - a dialogue between my idea and the material. I paint three to six canvases simultaneously from the same color palette, harmonizing the emotional rhythm across the series.

Within the studio, I explore the intimacy of the human form. Some of my nude works are self-portraits, exploring how I see myself against how the world interprets my body. The perception of a woman’s body shifts from sacred to carnal to sacrilege, depending on the viewer’s gaze and cultural lens. My work celebrates the female body as an instrument - its resonance does not hinge on its appearance but on its capacity to transmit feeling and connection.

The body, like the Earth, holds memory—soft yet resilient, shaped by what touches it. In my public work, the focus widens to honor the natural world and ask how we might become stewards of a generative, thriving future.

In addition to my full-time studio and public art practice, I collaborate with other artists. In 2024, I contributed to The Good of the Hive, an international mural initiative by Matt Willey dedicated to pollinator and climate awareness. 

My current series of work continues to explore how color, the nude, and rhythm can become instruments of connection - threading body, community, and earth into one harmonious choreography.