Parted seas, praying shells and a return to faith
This week we welcome Pam Y. Rim, a Taiwanese American oil painter based in Brooklyn. After nearly a decade working in engineering, technology and logistics, she became a full-time artist in 2026.
Her current body of work, Divine Maps, explores faith, surrender and transformation through large-scale oil paintings that place the viewer within moments of divine encounter. Drawing from seascapes, natural forms, sacred architecture and art-historical imagery, Rim uses recurring motifs of waves, shells, light and movement to visualize an interior spiritual journey.
Alongside her painting practice, Rim is the founder of Easely Editions, an artist-owned fine art print studio supporting independent creatives in New York City. Her work is rooted in the belief that careful attention to beauty, one another and the unseen is a meaningful practice of hope.
In her artist statement, Rim writes:
“‘Divine Maps’” is a collection of large-scale oil paintings exploring my return to faith and the search for divine presence within periods of uncertainty, surrender and transformation.
I imagine what it might feel like to stand within a miracle. Waves become walls, veils become thresholds, shells take on gestures of prayer, and light emerges through darkness. I draw from biblical narratives, sacred architecture, natural forms and my own lived experiences, weaving these references together into surreal environments where the physical and spiritual can occupy the same space.
I began this body of work during a period when many of the structures I had relied upon for stability were changing. In response, painting became a way of examining what remains when certainty does not. The works trace an evolving relationship with surrender: from the vulnerability of “Wholly Surrendered” and ‘We’re All Sinking,’ through the movement and deliverance of ‘Into Marvelous Light,’ toward increasingly intimate encounters with God in works such as ‘Host of Heavens.’
In this moment, when uncertainty can make control feel especially desirable, I am interested in the possibility that surrender can instead become a form of trust. Through ‘Divine Maps,’ I create imagined landscapes for that experience, the places where the unseen feels close enough to enter.”
