Holding Space for Joy

“Holding Space for Joy” explores the conscious choice to protect joy even when surrounded by heavier emotions.
The radiant center emerges through darker, layered colors, suggesting that joy can remain present without denying life’s complexities.

This artwork is from my series, “Taming Emotions.”

To keep moving forward in life, we need to learn how to manage heavy emotions such as grief, anxiety, and stress. Our minds often hold on to these emotions more easily, allowing them to weigh us down. In difficult moments, we may lose hope and feel overwhelmed by our circumstances. We want to fight and move forward—but how?

The answer lies in consciously “pushing” the heavy emotion down and bringing a positive emotion to the “surface.” Push despair down and bring hope to the surface. In the same way, we can consciously make space for gratitude, kindness, joy, love, forgiveness, and other positive emotions.

This process requires practice—we need to keep reminding our minds to bring these emotions forward. Positive emotions give us the strength to face difficult moments, keep moving forward, and rise above adversity.

Note: Only print is for sale here. In order to acquire the original artwork, please send me a DM (direct message)

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Aatmica Ojha is an abstract expressionist painter based in Murray, Utah, whose work treats color as a language for the emotions we rarely speak aloud. Born in India in 1989, she was making greeting cards for friends by the age of four — an early instinct to turn feeling into something she could give away. She earned a BS in Fashion & Apparel Design (with distinction) from Bangalore University and spent two years as an in-house boutique designer before returning, in 2016, to her first love: painting.

Working primarily in fluid, poured abstraction, Aatmica is drawn to color psychology and to the moment a private feeling becomes something others can stand inside. Her practice has always reached past the edge of the canvas. Over the past decade she has directed it toward people on the margins of attention — cancer patients, differently-abled artists, survivors of neurological illness, and underserved youth — donating between half and all of her sale proceeds through partners including the National Breast Cancer Foundation (U.S.) and the Cancer Patients Aid Association (India). Her painting Heart of Hope hangs at Intermountain Hospital in Riverton, Utah, and her work is held in the private collection of the Taj Hotels, India.

Just as often, her studio is a classroom or a gallery floor. Through the “Art Literacy Program” and “Together We Are Stronger” at Viewmont Elementary, she has guided more than 500 children in making art about unity, and she leads healing-centered workshops, live painting, and talks for adults moving through grief and isolation. Across all of it runs one conviction: that art can heal, empower, and draw us back toward one another.