Octavia — Original Mixed Media on Wood | Rita Irvin

She doesn't ask for your attention. She commands it.

Octavia emerges from a storm of newsprint and shadow — eight arms reaching, curling, filling every corner of the frame with the kind of presence that stops people mid-step. Carved directly into wood, her form radiates in deep vermillion and burning orange, her body detailed with gold-etched lines that follow the grain of the wood beneath. Her eyes — wide, dark, knowing — hold you.

The tentacles tell their own story. Each one is studded with real screws, bolts, and brass gears, embedded by hand into channels of deep magenta and crimson — industrial suction cups that are both alien and strangely familiar. Beneath it all, layers of newspaper collage have been inked and worked into the wood, their words and headlines absorbed into the dark background like the noise of the world swallowed by something older and deeper.

Octavia is a painting about intelligence that operates on its own terms. About power that doesn't need to announce itself. About the kind of creature — and the kind of person — who reaches in eight directions at once and somehow holds it all together.

• Medium: Mixed media on carved wood panel
• Dimensions: 32 × 49 inches
• Materials: Hand-carved wood, acrylic paint, newspaper collage, ink, screws, bolts, brass gears, found hardware
• Framed: Light wood frame, ready to hang
• Signed by the artist

About the Artist
Rita Irvin is a self-taught mixed-media artist born and raised in West Berlin, Germany. Her work explores memory, emotion, and transformation through layered textures, surreal symbolism, and dreamlike imagery. Influenced by Dalí, Frida Kahlo, and Georgia O'Keeffe, Rita developed her own visual language without formal training — shaped by years in interior design and a lifelong immersion in art and architecture. Every piece is a one-of-a-kind original, made by hand and never reproduced.

Questions or commission inquiries: info@ritairvin.com