God Lives Underwater

2010 - 2020

Large-scale abstract paintings evoking an unfamiliar world beneath the ocean’s surface.

God Lives Underwater began when Anthony Scarzafava finally had the space to work on a larger scale. After years of working within the limitations of small apartments, small works on paper, and deliberately restricted formats, he began making large paintings without a predetermined subject or concept.

One painting led to another. As the works accumulated, Scarzafava began to notice something emerging from them. The paintings seemed to suggest an otherworldly environment, something deep beneath the surface of the ocean. Forms appeared to resemble unfamiliar organisms, geological formations, and landscapes from a world that felt simultaneously recognizable and completely alien.

The idea for the series came after the paintings themselves. Rather than beginning with the title or a predetermined narrative, Scarzafava allowed the work to reveal its own direction. The title God Lives Underwater comes from a band he loves and ultimately became a fitting description for what he was seeing in the paintings.

The ocean can seem like another planet contained within our own. Scientific discoveries continue to reveal organisms, ecosystems, and physical environments that challenge our understanding of what life can look like and where it can exist. For Scarzafava, there is something almost sacred in that discovery: a vast, largely unexplored world existing beneath the surface of the one we already know.

God Lives Underwater is therefore not an attempt to depict a specific place beneath the sea. It is an exploration of the unfamiliar, the mysterious, and the possibility that something extraordinary may exist in the world around us without ever having been seen before.