The Art of Remembering

I remember the first time I saw my friend’s sibling.

They didn’t go by the name they do now, but even then, no name could capture their magic. Those wild orange curls. That constellation of freckles. They glowed in a town that never did.

It was the first time they blew me away, but it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Years passed. So did my friend. The thread between us snapped. But fate is a persistent fucker. One day, I stumbled across a painting on Instagram - a self-portrait, bloodied, heart in hand - and I knew it was them.

I had just survived heart cancer. And suddenly, here was Rylie, holding their heart out like a mirror.

I trembled as I tried to catch my breath (along with my teardrops). I messaged them instantly, flooded with praise. And they replied, almost shyly:

“Wait…do you remember me?”

As quickly as I cried, I laughed. Even as a kid, they never could recognize their beauty, uniqueness, or talent…as if anyone would ever be able to forget them once they’ve crossed paths. And yet - that’s partly what makes them so beautiful.

“Yes,” I said. “Of course I remember you.”

How could I forget? The only difference now…is their name is Rylie.

Rylie Severino is in constant conversation with their art. It speaks. It listens. It demands presence. And in return, it offers a map to something sacred.

Their world is one you feel your way through. It’s layered with grief and growth, symbolism and spirit, softness and sharpness - woven together by hands that know how to hold contradiction. Whether it's hearts and crows, tree roots and smoke, or the quiet stillness of a mirror reflecting back a moment of truth, Rylie’s visual language speaks with a pulse of its own.

A nonbinary, intuitive artist and educator, Rylie’s work is part portal, part offering. They create not to impress - but to process, to connect, to translate the language of emotion into form. Their practice is ritual. Their imagery is memory. Their presence - on canvas, in the classroom, online, through the screen - feels like a tether to something deeper.

This is what happens when art is not just how you create but how you exist, remember, and return to yourself.

This is a conversation across dimensions.

The Divine Act of Creation

There’s something sacred about the way Rylie Severino talks about creating. Not in a romanticized, tortured-artist sense, but in a grounded, visceral, fully embodied way. For Rylie, art is less about production and more about presence. Less “making something” and more becoming something in the moment.

It feels like being present. It feels like feeling. It feels right and divine.

Creation, for them, is a state of being. A frequency. A spiritual threshold they cross into when the lines, colors, and forms start flowing from intuition, not intellect. And then, something shifts. The work starts to speak back. Rylie describes this moment not as triumphant, but paradoxical - a balance of lightness and gravity. The process of creating becomes a mirror of identity: a map, a grounding, a revelation.

There is simultaneously a weight lifted and a positive heaviness that grounds me in the understanding of who I am.

There’s beauty in how un-final [sic] their process is. Where most artists crave resolution, Rylie resists it. Completion isn’t the goal, connection is. And even then, it’s never fixed.

I usually don’t know when a piece is ‘done.’ I have a hard time leaving shit alone. That carries through in my process - I always see an opportunity to interject, or fix something, or continue building an image. Most of my work is never confirmed done. I just stop working on it.

Their art lives in that sacred in-between: the unfinished, the ever-becoming, the moment where intuition translates into form and feeling. Rylie doesn’t chase perfection, they hold space for emergence.

To witness their work is to step into that liminal space with them. A place where the divine doesn’t declare itself - it just feels.

Symbols, Portals & Patterns

“Art is my way of living. Expressing. Understanding. Feeling. Communicating.”

In Rylie Severino’s world, nothing appears by accident. Every object - whether painted, stitched, drawn, or echoed - is a symbol. A signal. A thread in an ever-growing constellation of memory and meaning.

My artwork shows up in my work, often hung on the wall - my art is me. It’s identity. A connection between pieces.

They describe their practice as an ongoing dialogue between the past and the present. And like any good conversation, certain motifs return again and again: hearts, smoke, letters, chessboards, crows, cats. These are vessels that hold stories, loss, and truth.

A heart isn’t just a heart. It’s love. It’s grief. It’s life and death in the same soft beat.

A chessboard? Strategy. Structure. Family. The game of life itself.

Photos are the past. Candles are time. Smoke is the moment just before something disappears.

Even the cat, in all its intuition and independence, is a stand-in for the unseen - the 6th sense Rylie carries with them, always just beneath the surface.

I’m extremely sensitive. I’ve lost a lot - the biggest being my eldest brother James and my friend Arnav. That loss made me hold tight to people and things. I find meaning in everything and everyone.

It’s that sentimentality - the refusal to let things fade quietly - that shapes Rylie’s aesthetic into something almost devotional. Their work is filled with what they call “sentimental abundance”: the need to preserve, to archive, to make emotion visible. To create a visual language for what the body can’t always say out loud.

In pieces like Portal, Rylie maps the nervous system like tree roots, like rivers. The human body and the earth become mirrors of one another. It’s all connected. It’s all breathing together.

I believe we operate as one whole, yet each of us has our own microcosm of the world within us.

These patterns are sacred geometry for surviving the world with a soft heart. And when those symbols start to stack, repeat, reappear across canvases and time? That’s when you know you’re not just looking at someone’s art.

You’re looking at their mythology.

Grief, Sentiment & Sacred Clutter

“Extreme loss has led me to hold tight onto people and things.”

There’s a heaviness stitched into Rylie Severino’s work but not the kind that drags. It’s the kind that grounds. The kind that says, “I’ve lost too much to ever take anything for granted.”

Rylie is a master at archiving emotion. They collect it. Pin it down like pressed flowers. Yet, there’s nothing minimalist about Rylie’s emotional world. They want the clutter. The full shelf. The crowded canvas. Because each element is a memory refusing to disappear.

To look at Rylie’s art is to witness the moment right before something is gone. Or the moment just after.

It’s the desperate tenderness of holding on.

It’s the quiet bravery of letting go anyway.

And maybe the most honest part? They don’t always know which one they’re doing.

Their work doesn’t pretend to have answers. It feels through the questions. And grief - rather than being a thing to escape - is treated like a collaborator. A shadow at the table. A permanent part of the process.

And it’s what makes their work so unforgettable. Because in a world that tells us to move on quickly, to be polished, to be palatable - Rylie’s art says:

“No. I’m still here. And this still matters.”

Identity & the In-Between

Rylie Severino’s art doesn’t ask to be categorized - because neither does Rylie.

Their work flows with a kind of beautiful resistance: to binaries, to conclusions, to clean answers. They live, and create, in that sacred space between what the world demands and what their spirit actually is.

As a nonbinary artist, Rylie doesn’t make art about identity - they live identity through their art. It’s not always loud or didactic. It doesn’t need to be. It shows up in the fluidity of form, the rejection of structure, the quiet refusal to be pinned down.

My nonbinary identity is within my work. It feels like me.

In this in-between space, reality becomes pliable. Memory bends. Time loops. Their brush doesn’t just depict, it questions. What’s real? Who gets to say? What happens when multiple people live through the same moment, but walk away holding different truths?

Sometimes I’m not sure how extreme or normal things are.

I may experience an event with someone, or multiple people, and they’ll all have a different understanding or feeling attached to it.

I’m not sure what’s real.

There’s no anxiety in that admission. Only honesty. In fact, it’s that very uncertainty that fuels the work - makes it more open, more resonant. Rylie offers a mirror, and like any mirror, it shifts based on who’s standing in front of it.

Their connection to the divine isn’t rigid either. There’s no altar or doctrine. For Rylie, divinity lives in the act of creating itself.

“Creating is one of God’s gifts to humans.

Our ability to create such things is incredibly godly.”

That’s where they feel closest to something higher. Not in religion, not in perfection, but in process. In the quiet, raw moment of making something that didn’t exist before and letting it say something that words never could. And still, in a world that demands clarity, demands answers, demands performance - Rylie protects their softness. Not by hiding it, but by honoring it. By choosing understanding over judgment. By believing in love even when the world doesn’t always earn it.

Most people are just hurting and trying their best, whether they’ve wronged or not.

I love love. And it keeps me warm.

It’s that warmth that threads through everything they make. Not performative softness. Not aesthetic vulnerability. But real, lived compassion - for self, for others, for the mess of being human in a world that rarely leaves space for nuance.

To stand in the presence of Rylie’s work is to be reminded: You don’t have to have the answers. You don’t have to fit the mold.

You just have to feel.

And that? That’s enough.

Teaching & the Unteachables

In a room full of children and construction paper, Rylie Severino is both the guide and the student. They’re shaping creative minds but also reshaping their own. Because to teach art, especially to kids, is to constantly be reminded of what freedom really looks like.

They are way more creative than the average adult.

It’s so exciting. They inspire me in this way.

There’s something sacred about the way kids create: without fear, without rules, without worrying about what it means. Just expression in its purest form. For Rylie, that energy is clarifying. It reminds them of how unfiltered, unafraid, and alive creativity can be before the world starts putting borders around it.

Teaching has taught me so much and has influenced me in many ways, including my art.

But it’s not just about paint or process. For Rylie, the classroom is a safe space to feel - a studio of trust. Their role isn’t just to correct technique or assign projects. It’s to make space. To hold space. To teach kids how to see themselves as worthy of expression in the first place.

My biggest responsibility is giving them a safe space to express.

That responsibility runs deeper than any lesson plan. It means showing up with patience. With understanding. With the humility to let go of control and let the chaos happen. Because anyone who’s ever taught kids knows - they don’t care about your perfectly laid plans. They come in with their own energy, their own stories, their own wildness. And that’s the beauty of it.

Working with kids has taught me to let go of the idea that I’m fully in control.

In that way, teaching becomes its own kind of art form - messy, collaborative, unpredictable. And like all good art, it reflects something back.

Sometimes it’s wonder. Sometimes it’s frustration.

Sometimes it’s a reminder that creation doesn’t always need a clean ending, just enough room to breathe.

Rituals & Reflection

For Rylie Severino, artmaking is a ritual. A return to self. A quiet confrontation. A way to root into reality when the world feels too loud, too fast, or too fragmented.

My room… being surrounded by myself, my thoughts, and my belongings.

Recently I’ve been practicing a lot of mirror studies. It’s a way to understand myself - what I’m experiencing and feeling.

It forces me to confront my reality.

The mirror becomes an altar. The act of looking becomes a form of study. It’s not vanity, it’s vulnerability. It’s facing the raw, unfiltered version of yourself and saying: I see you. I’m listening. And when people encounter their work? They don’t need them to decode anything. No over-analysis. No art-speak. Just feeling.

I hope they just feel.

Because before the intellect kicks in, before the critique, before the ‘what does it mean?’ - Rylie wants the work to meet people in the body. In the chest. In that flash of resonance that happens when something says what you couldn’t say out loud.

They’re not asking for understanding. They’re asking for honesty. For presence. For the courage to let a piece sit inside you without needing to control it. Maybe that’s why their work hits so hard - it’s not trying to win you over - it’s just trying to hold space for something real.

I don’t require people to see my meaning.

One of my professors cried in front of my work. That was…extremely moving.

That moment - tears, silence, no explanation - might be the most perfect reading of their work possible.

In a world obsessed with clarity, sometimes the most radical thing you can do is make people feel first and understand never.

Social Media & the Public Diary

To be an artist in the digital age is to constantly walk a tightrope between expression and exposure.

Share too much, and you risk your softness. Share too little, and you disappear into the scroll. Rylie Severino doesn’t pretend to have the perfect balance, but they are intentional. Their artist Instagram isn’t curated for clout. It’s something closer to a public diary: honest, raw, and unfiltered in a way that feels sacred, not strategic.

I don’t really feel compelled to share my process. It’s a very intimate thing that would feel very vulnerable to expose.

Rylie doesn’t believe in performing creativity. Their process is personal - too alive, too shifting, too sacred to flatten into reels or timelapses. But they also know that sharing matters. That connection matters. That being seen can be just as powerful as being private.

Sharing is more important than the insecurity that comes with it.

I debate all the time if I should remove certain posts…but I know there is something greater about sharing that prevents me from hiding.

That’s the line they walk. Between honesty and safety. Between vulnerability and self-protection. Not to perform, but to connect. To show up with intention, even when the algorithm asks for speed and spectacle.

I try to be intentional about what I share.

I’m sure enough of myself that it doesn’t matter what happens after I post - because I know I am genuine.

Still, the gaze is real. The judgment. The pressure to explain. To polish. To turn healing into content. And it’s not lost on Rylie how that can twist the meaning of a piece - how easily a sacred thing can become a product.

It’s easy to assume how others are judging me through my art Instagram presence.

Sharing it is important and strengthening but it also opens the door for judgments.

And all of that is important.

You can look. You can scroll. You can feel whatever you need to feel.

But the art? The soul behind it? That remains intact.

LAST LIGHT

Rylie Severino doesn’t make art to be understood.

They make it to feel. To remember. To survive.

Their work is a map made of memory, ritual, loss, softness, identity, and divine intuition stitched together with care, and always left a little unfinished, a little open. That’s what makes it real.

In a world that rushes toward resolution, Rylie invites us to sit with the questions.

To stay in the blur. To honor the symbols that follow us. To make meaning not from perfection, but from presence.

Their work is not a performance. It’s a prayer. A processing. A way back to the body.

And for those willing to meet it where it lives, it offers something rare: Not a conclusion, but a connection.

📸 : Rylie’s Instagram

⭐ Want to discover NJ’s next rising star?

📲 Download our app for exclusive, hand-picked artist recommendations - because the best artists aren’t always on your radar!