Sea Serpent

Painting Description: "Sea Serpent" by Valeria Notarnicola

Medium: Acrylic and lacquer on canvas
Dimensions: 80 × 60 cm
Date: May 2025
Style: In the tradition of Gustav Klimt

In Sea Serpent, we are submerged into a sensual aquatic dreamscape where the feminine form undulates with the fluidity of water and desire. Inspired by Klimt’s mythic and erotic series of female nudes — particularly his Water Serpents — this composition becomes an ode to fluid identity, unity, and ornamental ecstasy.

Four ethereal women, entwined like sea nymphs, float through darkened waters that shimmer with abstract blooms and kaleidoscopic marine motifs. Their elongated bodies are pale and otherworldly, outlined in delicate curves that seem to breathe against the jewel-toned background — a vibrant interplay of emerald greens, fiery oranges, and opulent golds. Each figure is not merely painted but adorned — their hair flowing like gilded riverweed, their faces resting in expressions of tranquil pleasure or introspective reverie.

Ornamentation is not confined to the backdrop; it infiltrates the very being of the subjects, merging them with their surroundings in Klimt’s signature dissolution of body into pattern. The background teems with flower-like bursts, pearls, and sinuous lines, creating a rhythmic, almost musical visual language.

Yet beneath the decorative richness lies a quiet intimacy. The figures do not pose; they surrender. To water. To one another. To the mysterious tide of femininity. Klimt’s spirit lives here not only in the gold and the sensuality, but in the celebration of the eternal feminine as both divine and elemental — as unknowable and seductive as the sea itself.