Essie Somma "Southern Live Oak"

Essie Somma is a visual artist whose practice explores intimacy, ecology, and identity through narrative painting, drawing, and printmaking. Her layered compositions blend surrealism, literary influence, and lived experience—using striking palettes, fragmented figures, and symbolic landscapes to examine the tension between tradition and transformation.

Raised in the American South, Somma draws from personal memory, native flora, and regional subcultures to explore how communities root themselves in love, resilience, and interdependence. Her current work reimagines Southern U.S. coastal culture outside patriarchal frameworks, using indigenous plants and microclimates as metaphors for chosen family and collective care. Themes of tenderness, humor, and ecological resistance recur throughout her work, grounded in the belief that softness can be radical.

As a full-time traveler from 2021 to 2025, she explored over 40 countries, investigating colonial legacies and cultural identity across developing nations. Interdisciplinary research remains central to her process. She has participated in six international artist residencies and exhibited in six countries across North America, Europe, and Asia.

Somma holds a BA in Fine Art from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and studied art history and marketing at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Painting, Drawing, and Printmaking at the University of Florida.