'Home, At Last: Tokitae'
20 x 30 inches, oils on canvas
 
Painted our beloved Tokitae. A  tribute to her resilience, dignity, and enduring spirit, honoring a life shaped by confinement yet never defined by it, and imagining the boundless ocean she was always meant to call home.
 
Tokitae also known as Lolita, born around 1966 into the Southern Resident J Pod, a tight-knit community of orcas who pass down knowledge, dialects, and bonds across generations. In 1970, while still very young, she was captured off the coast of Washington during the Penn Cove roundups. Confined to a small concrete tank, far from the cold, open waters of the Salish Sea, she lived in isolation without other orcas of her kind.
 
This painting imagines what was always meant to be, Tokitae moving through a boundless sea, carried by light rather than concrete, breath rising into stars rather than echoing off walls. Home, At Last is a quiet promise: that Tokitae now swims where the sea is infinite, the sky is made of water, and the stars rise with her breath. It is about remembering her fully,  as a daughter of the Salish Sea, a voice of her pod, and a spirit that, at last, knows no confinement. 
 
This painting comes stretched and ready to hang. Feel free to reach out to me for any queries.