Story of the Art :
Water Deva was created as the cover art for Marya Stark’s upcoming concept album ‘Underground River’ (with Daniel Berkman) and short film (created in collaboration with Earthbased Media). Many years ago Marya had a dream about being a water spirit, existing in essence form within the water. The life of the Water Deva’s was one filled with moving, singing, and making beautiful shapes with other water fae. Together, through their synchronized expressions, they would generate seeds of light underwater, which would give form to all aquatic life. At the time, Marya was struck by this imagery, and envisioned creating an album of music expressing what those songs must have sounded like.

In 2021, Marya experienced a period of deep grief and was having a difficult time creating art in her customary form. She felt the need to pursue accessing a more vast spectrum of emotions from the somatic into the subterranean realms as a way to move the emotions through her body, rather than through words. She recalled her dream of the Ancestral Water Deva’s, and called on their songs to help connect to the underground streams of life that moved within the waters of the world, the waters of raw emotion, and the waters of her being. Together, with her long-time friend and collaborator Daniel Berkman, the two composed a wordless body of work that is an impressionistic soundscape demonstrating the emotional landscape of the Underground River, invoking the sounds of these water spirits, forming seeds of light inside the listener. One is reminded that you can still see their dance and hear the original songs anytime you visit a fresh spring, waterfall, or sit beside the wild rivers or creeks. Their original song of life, sung by the Water Devas exists even in the waters of your own being. 

Marya shared her concept with Danielle, who painted the beautiful ‘Water Deva’ as an oil painting expression of this dream. Influenced by cymatics- the mandala-like images that sound makes when vibrating in water, and the visions of water fae giving form to life through their songs, dance, and prayers. Danielle brings her signature style of reverent tapestries of wonder embedded with ancestral wisdom to this radiant aquatic piece. Looking closely inside the image, you can see it teaming with life, alive with the histories of the subterranean realms, the sacred caves beneath the surface, the water dragon weaving the tale, breathing life into the underground river that connects us all. Here the Water Deva is depicted as toning, along with several other water fae, shaping a mandala of light seeds that ripple out into the bodies of waters across all time.