Water & Metaphors/ volume 92

Water is never only water. It is memory and movement, origin and erasure, tenderness and force. It carries histories within its currents and mirrors the inner states of those who observe it. In Collect Art’s Special Edition, Volume 92, Water and Metaphors, we turn to water not simply as a subject, but as a language—one spoken fluently by painters across cultures, geographies, and generations.

From the earliest cave paintings to contemporary abstraction, water has remained one of art’s most enduring presences. Rivers have symbolised time, oceans have embodied the unknown, and rain has evoked renewal and grief alike. In this volume, international painters engage with water as a metaphorical device through which questions of identity, memory, migration, ecology, emotion, and transformation unfold. Each artwork included here reflects a personal and cultural relationship with water, revealing how deeply this element shapes both lived experience and artistic imagination.

In painting, water presents a paradox. It resists fixed form, yet it defines landscapes. It reflects light, but also obscures depth. It can be calm, violent, healing, or destructive—sometimes all at once. The artists featured in this edition embrace this complexity. Some work from direct observation, painting seas, rivers, rain-soaked streets, or submerged bodies. Others approach water conceptually, allowing its symbolic weight to inform abstraction, gesture, and colour. Across styles and techniques, water becomes a carrier of meaning rather than a passive motif.

This issue arrives at a moment when water occupies an increasingly urgent place in global consciousness. Climate change, rising sea levels, droughts, floods, and polluted oceans have transformed water into a site of political, ethical, and emotional tension. Many of the painters in this volume respond to this reality, whether explicitly or intuitively. Their works ask us to consider water not as an infinite resource, but as a fragile system entwined with human responsibility. In these paintings, beauty and unease often coexist, mirroring the contradictions of our relationship with the natural world.

At the same time, water remains deeply personal. It is the body’s primary element, the substance of tears and breath, a threshold between life and loss. Several artists in this edition explore water as an inner landscape—a metaphor for emotional states such as grief, desire, resilience, or solitude. Stillness and turbulence become visual expressions of psychological experience. Through layers of paint, translucency, and movement, water allows the unseen to surface.

Portraiture, landscape, abstraction, and figurative painting all find space within this theme. Water flows through each genre differently, shaping narrative and form. A shoreline becomes a boundary between past and future. A reflection disrupts certainty. Immersion suggests surrender or rebirth. These metaphorical readings are not imposed but emerge organically from each artist’s practice, shaped by personal histories, cultural contexts, and material choices.

As always, Collect Art remains committed to presenting artists in depth and in their own voices. Alongside the artworks, this volume includes biographies that trace each painter’s journey, artist statements that articulate their conceptual frameworks, and personalised interviews that open a window into their working processes. These conversations reveal how water enters the studio—not only as an image, but as a way of thinking, remembering, and questioning.

What unites the artists in this edition is not a shared style, but a shared sensitivity. Each painter listens to water differently: to its rhythms, its silences, its capacity to hold contradiction. Together, their works form a visual current that moves across borders, inviting readers to slow down and look more closely. In a world driven by speed and certainty, water asks for attentiveness. It reminds us that meaning, like a tide, is always shifting.

Water and Metaphors is an invitation to reflect, to drift, to immerse. It asks what water means today, not only in ecological or symbolic terms, but in relation to how we see ourselves and one another. As viewers and readers, we are encouraged to enter these painted waters without seeking fixed conclusions, allowing space for ambiguity, emotion, and resonance.

We hope this special edition offers both contemplation and connection. May these works remind us that water, in all its forms, continues to shape our stories—quietly, powerfully, and endlessly.