digital art by carella keil

Artist’s Statement:

This photographic collection coalesces around themes of light and identity. We are each of us a "Phoenix Rising," physical portals of nuanced emotions, fractured selves absorbing and radiating light.  

"Sundial" was created from photographs taken during the summer solstice, dark flowers and eyes dilating open as though under water. "This Is How the Light Gets In" captures a state of melancholia and dissociation, referencing Leonard Cohen's lyrics "There is a crack, a crack in everything/That's how the light gets in."

"Synesthesia" merges touch with sight, an imprint of being, the texture of mood and memory. "Heart Over Head," MRI as autobiography, hair like waves of light, time fossilized within the body.

Each image refracts light back to the viewer with broken radiance.

Phoenix Rising (originally published in Nightingale & Sparrow Issue XIX: Bonfire)

This Is How the Light Gets In (originally published in The Storms Issue 2)

Sundial (originally published in Open Ceilings Winter 2024: Dress Rehearsal)

Heart Over Head (originally published in Hart House Review 2025)

Synesthesia (originally published in Loud Coffee Press Vol. 5 Issue 3 [Back Cover])

BIO: Carella is a writer and digital artist who creates surreal, dreamy images that explore nature, fantasy realms, portraiture, melancholia and inner dimensions. Her work appears online in Columbia Journal, Tangled Locks and BULL Lit Mag. She is a Pushcart Prize Nominated writer, Best of the Net Nominee and the 2023 Door is a Jar Writing Award Winner in Nonfiction. She is the featured artist for the Fall 2024 Issue of Blue Earth Review. Her photography has appeared on the covers of Glassworks Magazine, Nightingale and Sparrow, Cosmic Daffodil, In Parentheses, Silk Road Review, Straylight Magazine, Frost Meadow Review and Colors: The Magazine.