Stay With Me

Watercolor on Paper, 2025

There is a moment when you realize that love has already taken hold — not with a rush, but with a quiet inevitability.

You feel the pull, and you know the risk: to reach is to be exposed, to be seen, to possibly not be met.

Stay With Me lives in that breath between reaching and retreat.

This painting is about the courage to remain open even as fear begins to whisper. The soft bloom at its center is not desire but trust — the fragile kind that forms when you decide to stay, even knowing you could be left waiting in that space alone.

As the layers of watercolor settled, they became a record of that tension: the pulse of longing held against the steady calm of acceptance. It is not a plea to be loved, but a vow to love anyway.

Because love, in its truest form, asks us to stay — not because it’s safe, but because it’s real.

— Bridget I. O’Brien, 2025