Rise UP • Original

From My Personal Journal

Some paintings arrive with a burst of color.

This one arrived with a feeling.

I remember looking at the empty canvas and sensing movement before there was even a shape—something lifting upward, wings unfolding against darkness. Not falling. Not fighting. Just rising.

At first it felt like a Phoenix.

That ancient symbol has always stayed with me—the bird that rises from ashes, renewed, brighter than before. But as I began to paint, the Phoenix in front of me started to feel like more than a myth.

The colors came first.

Crimson. Gold. Turquoise. Violet. Each feather seemed to demand its own light against the deep black background. The wings stretched wider and wider, almost like flames turning into flight.

And as those colors spread across the canvas, I was reminded of a story shared with me by a close friend.

She once spoke about someone she had lived with—an openly LGBT woman whose strength quietly reshaped the way people around her saw the world. Not through confrontation, but through courage. Through the simple act of living honestly in a world that hasn’t always made that easy.

That story stayed with me as I painted.

The Phoenix began to feel less like a creature of mythology and more like a symbol of something deeply human. The colors in its wings carried echoes of pride, identity, and resilience—reminders that rising often begins with the courage to be fully seen.

That’s when the name came to me.

Rise Up.

Not just for the bird lifting itself into the sky.

But for every person who finds the strength to rise up within themselves… who refuses to dim their colors, even when the world around them feels dark.

Because when one soul finds the courage to rise up, it reminds the rest of us that love—true love—was never meant to live in shadows.

A STORY BORN FROM SONIA’S GRATEFUL HEART AND TOLD BY SAM®, INSPIRED BY THE ORIGINAL.

Original painting photography by Studio Graetz

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