Last Breath | Original Acrylic Painting

Fine art prints available here.

One day, we will take a breath and never take another. It's something we all know, but rarely allow ourselves to think about. That one day, after everything we've loved, everything we've lost, every ordinary morning and extraordinary moment, there will be one final breath.

Last Breath is the final painting in my Breathe collection, and perhaps the most personal in its meaning. Unlike the other paintings, there is no person in this one. Just a bubble, caught at the exact moment it bursts.

Throughout the painting, I've used colours inspired by the changing tones of a woman's skin as she moves through life. From the softness of a newborn to the skin that has aged through decades of living, loving, laughing and surviving. Every colour represents a little part of the life that has been.

And if you look closely, there's a bird. For me, it represents the possibility that something of us carries on. Whether that's a soul, the love we've left behind or simply the memories that live in other people, I think that's something everyone should be free to interpret for themselves.

I chose a bubble because for a little while, it exists. It catches the light, moves through the air and becomes its own tiny world. And then, in a fraction of a second, it's gone.

We spend so much of our lives thinking about what's coming next. Next week, next year, when the children are older, when things settle down. In the day to day we forget that being here at all is extraordinary.

I don't see this painting as simply being about death. I see it as being about life, because a last breath can only exist after a lifetime of others.

Last Breath completes my Breathe collection, a series exploring the moments that make up a human life, from the first breath taken in a mother's arms to the final one that leaves us.

I hope this painting makes people feel something different depending on where they are in their own lives. Perhaps sadness, perhaps comfort, perhaps gratitude.

But most of all, I hope it reminds them to live while they're here.