Surfacing Series: Red Fae Painting

Painter, designer, environmentalist, and entrepreneur. A born advocate with innate passion, curiosity, and ambition, she was an environmentalist and vegetarian by age 11 and by then, totally obsessed with the sea. Day earned a B.F.A. from Rhode Island College. She has worked for Sotheby’s as a paint restoration artist, as a painter on large-scale theatre scrims, a consultant on small business projects, and as a small business owner. Day’s entrepreneurial work has gained national attention, earning several awards in the sustainable and social enterprise arenas, including the 2009 Eileen Fisher Business Grant Program for Women Entrepreneurs and a Women's Empowerment Fellowship through the U.S. State Department and UCONN in 2013. Currently she is a partner in a start-up that in 2016 raised over a half million dollars of crowdfunding support for their innovative kayak, and successfully shipped its first production boats in March of 2018. Painting in the US, Caribbean, Central America, and Europe for more than 3 decades, her work draws inspiration from sketches, journals, and photographs made during her travels. Her work can be found in galleries and private collections both here and abroad. An artivist, Day makes art with a purpose. “I believe that urgency and action are what is needed most, concerning the conservation of our oceans. Through dialog and education we can change the way people perceive the health of our oceans and help them understand what it would mean if they were to lose their diversity and vitality.“ Her current work continues her ongoing colloquy with the sea, exploring the ideas of abstraction and perception through photos taken while ascending to the surface of the water. “I photograph the underside or “skin of the sea” while surfacing, then head into the studio to paint the results. Under the sea, looking up, once familiar images become otherworldly and unrecognizable at the whim of current or wind. Fractured, shattered and reconfigured: Is it an overturned life raft, contents spilling out, plastic trash floating on the surface or an idyllic beach replete with coconut palms?” Day donates a percentage of each painting sold to Sea Shepard Conservation Society, who’s mission is to end the destruction of habitat and slaughter of wildlife in the world's oceans in order to conserve and protect ecosystems and species.