Somewhere Over the Rainbow… is a collection curated and painted by Sophia Peck featuring two live painted portraits painted at 700 Bryden by Joleanne Designs and Rick Borgia.

 

Sophia Peck was the selected artist in residence within the historic OTE Arts Mansion in Columbus, Ohio where she crafted the collection of 20 abstract expressionist acrylic and oil paintings explores values discovered through reading The Beginner’s Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity by Matthew J. Van Natta, alongside the familiar idea of the “American Dream.”

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Together, these ideas led Sophia to consider the possibility that the moments we long for—whether shared with others or experienced in solitude—do not necessarily lead to a final destination. Instead, life can be understood as a continual state of arrival: the moment we recognize that the life we have been waiting for is already unfolding around us.

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Sophia entered the residency carrying the memory of Paris, a city she had once imagined as the fulfillment of a dream. For the past year, she had found herself reflecting on the experience of leaving the country for the first time and the way that memory had continued to occupy her sense of time and place. A year earlier, when applying for the residency at the Mansion, she proposed creating a painting series inspired by that unforgettable experience. Yet when she began sketching, she realized that painting Paris would pull her attention away from the place she was actually in. Rather than reminiscing, she began to look closer. Her attention turned toward the historic mansion itself: its floral wallpaper, delicate door hardware, hinges, garden, and the quiet architectural details that might otherwise go unnoticed. The paintings became an exercise in presence—an attempt to notice what was already there.

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While experimenting with oil paint for the first time and constructing a crown sculpture for a tea party, flowers emerged as both subject and symbol. During the residency, Sophia bought flowers for herself, received them unexpectedly, and began painting them as reminders of desire, romance, femininity, and the simple beauty of receiving what she had once imagined she would have to leave home to find.

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Inspired in part by Van Gogh’s sunflowers after a visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the florals throughout the collection shift between the recognizable and the entirely abstract. Each became a way of grounding herself in a particular moment.

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The Mansion itself began to feel like a fairy tale. Sophia often imagined herself as a princess inside a tower, surrounded by paintings created by other artists within the Mansion. Stories of medieval knights found online became companions while she painted and white butterflies moved through the garden when leaving each night. Dragons and other symbols seemed to reveal themselves through the architecture and surrounding landscape. Next door, a literal dragon became part of the surreal environment surrounding her studio.

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Rather than attempting to control what the work should become, Sophia surrendered to the instinctive language of abstract painting—throwing, layering, and moving paint with emotional intention. For the first time, she had a private studio in which she could allow the work to evolve without knowing exactly where it was going.

That surrender became central to the collection.

“Painting alone became lonely.” Peck reflected.

In response, she began opening the studio to others. She hosted a tea party with Local small business owner Crystal: Follow Your Spirit clothing and the Ohio Girl Scouts, inviting participants of all ages into the space to make art of their own. Then, weekly collaborations with the music collective Melody House Music activated the studio through weekly open decks, featuring IMMIA, IAMSOMATIC, SERION DION, and Douggert, as well as opportunities for others to experiment with a new medium. These gatherings were inspired by the surrealist salon: a space where artists, musicians, thinkers, and curious strangers could gather, exchange ideas, and enter a shared creative flow state.

 

The residency culminated in a grand open reception inspired by a vision Sophia had the moment she first entered the Mansion. Tiffany Jones Music performed on harp as guests moved through the multiple floors of the historic house. Vintage collector and fashion designer Katt of Manifest Magnolia styled models in victorian attire and transformed the space into something resembling a surreal masquerade ball. 

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For the first time, MAjESTiCA! was presented as an exhibition identity rather than simply a persona.

MAjESTiCA! had once been a form of self-expression and masking—a heightened, theatrical version of Sophia that allowed her to explore who she might become. Hot pink and saturated magenta became visual signatures of that persona. Magenta itself is an imagined color, constructed by the brain when red and blue wavelengths are perceived without green. In that sense, it became an appropriate metaphor for an identity existing somewhere between reality and imagination. For Sophia, MAjESTiCA! became a kind of armor: an exaggerated, theatrical self through which she could explore possibility.

The residency offered something different.

It offered the freedom to stop performing arrival and simply experience it—to celebrate being alive, being present, and being fully oneself.

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Somewhere Over the Rainbow… is ultimately an exploration of that realization: that perhaps the life we dream about is not waiting for us somewhere else. Sometimes, it is already here.