Hello, I'm Ryanne Waters.
I am a visual artist whose primary mediums are painting and photography. I didn’t set out to become an artist. For most of my adult life, I followed the straight and narrow path, doing what I was “supposed” to do: the desk job, the deadlines, the version of stability that’s meant to feel safe. I was good at it, too. At 34, I had the dream job, the dream relationship, and the dream condo. I had it all. Until the universe knocked me down a peg, literally. A bike accident left me with a brain injury, but it also loosened everything I’d been holding down: the engagement I thought was forever, the career I had built, the sexual assault I’d buried, the life I had chosen, and my sense of where I belonged. All of it surfaced while I grappled with chronic health issues that, in hindsight, were my body screaming “no” after years of suppression. After the accident, I found myself in art therapy as a way to cope with what felt like an unmanageable amount of change at once. I had always been creative as a child, but this was my first time returning to art as an adult, using it to express what I couldn’t put into words. Painting became a language for the things that felt too complex or overwhelming to articulate. Through this experience, I learned to work intuitively, letting layers of color and texture guide me. I rarely start with a planned composition or sketch. I’ve learned to trust that what needs to surface will. It’s a lot like healing: uncomfortable, messy, unpredictable, and necessary. Bold color and movement are central to my work. I’m drawn to contrasts, light and dark, texture and stillness, chaos and calm, because they mirror what I feel internally. I’m interested in what happens when you stop trying to control the outcome and let emotion guide you instead of the idea. That honesty is what makes painting such a vital process for me. For twelve years, I worked in environmental nonprofits, translating other people’s stories and agendas. While I loved the work, it was always someone else’s narrative, and I longed for the freedom to tell my own. Producing photography and videography projects for conservation work reconnected me with storytelling through imagery. I was captivated by capturing people in their element, the work they do, the flow they inhabit, the lives they lead, and after art therapy reignited my creative energy, I picked up a camera for myself. Photography and painting now exist side by side in my practice. My photographs often inspire my paintings, and my paintings inform my photography; the two mediums feed each other and allow me to explore the world in complementary ways. Both give me the freedom to observe, to notice, and to express what moves me, rather than what I am expected to communicate. Nature and spirituality are quiet threads running through all my work and my life. They appear in jaguars, jellyfish, mountains, night skies, and the colors I notice in my personal spiritual practice. They are more than aesthetic motifs; they are a language, a lens for intuition, connection, and understanding that everything is always in flux. My deep connection with nature has been a through line across my life, shaping my career, my art, and the stories I seek to tell. Whether painting or photographing, I am less interested in capturing a polished image than in what the process uncovers. Creating is where I process emotion, release control, and find beauty in the unresolved. I don’t believe in clean narratives of healing; of a perfect before and after. I believe in movement, in allowing things to be incomplete, in finding meaning in the mess. My work is an ongoing conversation between my inner world and the physical one, between pain and possibility. The art I create now feels like the truest reflection of who I am, not because it’s polished, but because it’s honest. I create to stay connected to myself and to the world around me. I create because it reminds me that even when everything falls apart, something new is always trying to come through.