5 Stages of Grief

Featured in Student Scholar Showcase 2026

5 Stages of Grief is a series of oil paintings that explores how I perceive the process of grieving through personal objects in the home. Organized around five commonly recognized stages—Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance—the works connected together by a continuous, expansive backdrop that evokes memory, perception, and the constructed nature of the emotional narrative. Rather than offering literal depictions, I place the subject within a domestic interior space surrounded by familiar household objects that function as symbols for complex emotional states. Through subtle distortions and surreal strategies, these forms are re-contextualized to evoke instability, tension, and transformation. By combining symbolic imagery with pictorial interpretation, this series positions grief as both deeply personal and collectively understandable, proposing painting as a means of examining psychological space, inner experience, and shared awareness.