When I began experimenting with mixed media, I didn’t expect layering to change the way I saw painting itself. What starts as a technical choice — combining materials like acrylics, liners, or metallic paints — quickly becomes an emotional language. The more I layered, the more each work began to breathe differently.
Mixed media isn’t about excess; it’s about truth. It mirrors the way we experience the world — complex, overlapping, sometimes contradictory. Every layer hides something and reveals something else. And in that quiet exchange between what’s seen and what’s buried, depth is born.
Beyond One Material: The Story of Surfaces
Traditional painting often relies on a single medium: oil, watercolor, or acrylic. Each has its own logic, but mixed media breaks that boundary. It welcomes conflict and contrast. Gloss against matte, transparency over opacity — the materials begin to speak to one another.
In my studio, I often start with acrylics to set a base rhythm — broad gestures, blocks of color. Then come the metallics: silvers, chromes, and reflective pigments that catch light and shift mood depending on where you stand. Finally, fine liners and markers bring in precision — graphic traces that carve thought into emotion.
When these textures coexist, the surface transforms. It becomes more than an image; it becomes an event — a conversation between materials.
Layering as Emotional Metaphor
To layer is to accept imperfection. Every new coat of paint interacts with what came before it — sometimes enhancing, sometimes obscuring. It’s a dialogue between control and surrender.
This process feels deeply psychological. The way we build layers in art often reflects how we build identity — through experiences, contradictions, and memory. Just like in life, no surface is ever entirely new. Something always remains beneath.
That’s why mixed media paintings often feel more human: they reveal the traces of decision, hesitation, and change. You can feel time inside them.
The Role of Light and Reflection
Metallic pigments and reflective paints are more than decorative elements — they introduce movement. As light shifts throughout the day, so does the artwork. What looks calm in the morning becomes almost electric at dusk.
This interplay between material and light adds another dimension. It challenges the idea that painting is static. In mixed media, even the quietest surface is alive — vibrating between shadow and shine, opacity and glow.
For me, that liveliness connects to something emotional: the impossibility of capturing a single truth. Every reflection is a new version of the painting, just as every glance is a new version of ourselves.
Symbolism Inside the Process
My work often incorporates symbolic forms — eyes, flowers, serpents, faces — and layering gives these motifs weight. A serpent traced with metallic lines feels alive because the layers underneath pulse with color. A floral pattern half-hidden by opaque paint evokes memory or loss.
In mixed media, symbols aren’t simply drawn; they’re unearthed. The act of layering turns painting into excavation — not of the material, but of meaning.
Even a simple mark gains power when it coexists with texture. It becomes part of a tactile story — a visual echo of touch, pressure, and time.
Why Depth Feels Emotional
When viewers describe mixed media paintings as “deep,” they’re often talking about more than composition. Depth, in this sense, is psychological. It’s what happens when a surface refuses to be read in one glance.
That’s what I love most about working this way: the refusal of simplicity. A painting becomes a space to linger, to trace the history of gestures, to sense the invisible layers beneath what’s visible.
In a world obsessed with clarity and immediacy, mixed media insists on slowness. It invites you to look again — to notice what glimmers, what hides, what changes.
And perhaps that’s the real meaning of depth: not perfection or polish, but the quiet tension between what can be seen and what will always remain beneath the surface.
