ROOTED
SEVEN DAYS Jan 22- Jan 28th 2026
*all 7 now available below
Rooted is a seven-part botanical opera by Nisa Mars—an immersive journey through sound, story, and original art. Each piece is a conversation with the living world, grown from deep memory, ancestral connection, and the quiet wisdom of plants.
This series blends original songs, layered visuals, and hand-painted works into a single frequency—where art becomes ritual, and the natural world is remembered as kin.
Several of the pieces originated as large-scale art shows on Martha’s Vineyard in the summer of 2025:
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O-Ki-Ka was featured from June 16 to July 13 at the Feldman Family Art Space at the MV Film Center in Vineyard Haven.
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The Rose Room was exhibited from July 4 to August 8 at The Workshop Gallery, 32 Beach Road, Vineyard Haven.
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Retrograde, a bold, one-day-only installation of 222 works, took place on July 15 at the Grange Hall in West Tisbury.
1. O-Ki-Ka – A ceremonial song for the orchids who raised her.
2. The Studio – A sacred space where silence speaks and the veil thins.
3. The Rose Room – Roses as frequency, memory, and initiation.
4. Botanicals – The garden as family. Every bloom a mirror.
5. Retrograde – Reclaiming the cycle. Realignment through art and fire.
6. Red Butterfly – A surreal, painterly world of emergence and flight.
7. Lime Tree – The orchard of childhood. Sweetness, roots, return.
Rooted is a living body of work. Each piece is paired with an original painting and original song—planted like seeds for those who know how to listen.
Part 1 'OKIKA'
O-Ki-Ka is a ceremonial song for the orchids—my lifelong companions, my muses, my sisters. Their presence has shaped my life from the very beginning. They’ve lived with me in every home, bloomed quietly in every window, and stood by me through every creative threshold. They are not plants to me. They are family. This song is a conversation. A love letter. A way of honoring the spirit that flows between us. They also inspired my show by the same name 'OKIKA' June 16th- July 13th 2025 at the Feldman Family art space at the MV Film center on Martha's Vineyard It was the orchids that first called me to paint. Their forms, their stillness, their impossible mystery— they awakened something ancient in me. Something that knew how to listen. Something that already understood beauty not as decoration, but as frequency. O-Ki-Ka is the Hawaiian word for orchid. And Hawai’i lives in my heart. I lived in Kona, Hawaii, and spent sacred time there— immersed in the land, the light, and the profound energy of the islands. That time deepened my reverence for the Hawaiian culture, where the orchid is not just admired, but honored. Where beauty itself is a form of truth. That spirit lives in this song. Every orchid I’ve ever painted carries a piece of that truth. Every line. Every petal. Every moment of silence. This song is the beginning of a new body of work— a seven-part series of music, paintings, and stories that speak the language of the flowers. But this one—O-Ki-Ka—this is where it all begins. With the orchid. With the muse. With the sisters who have always been with me. — My journey as a visual artist began with orchids. My first solo show was called 'Solitary Confinement', painted during the quiet brutality of a Martha’s Vineyard winter. It was me, the fire, and the orchids—one bloom at a time. That collection became the doorway into everything that followed. I now paint primarily on glass, blending realism with layered emotion, creating high-end, one-of-a-kind botanical works. Each piece is a transmission. Each one carries a story. And the orchids are always with me. ABOUT ROOTED Rooted is a seven-part botanical series by Nisa Mars. Each piece pairs lyrics then an original song with a handcrafted painting and video—telling stories of nature, memory, and quiet transformation. These works explore what it means to be present, to listen deeply, and to create from the ground up.— Song & Visuals by Nisa Mars Explore the full series after January 28th Link in bio above under "ROOTED" Disclaimer: All visuals, audio, lyrics, and creative content in the Rooted series were written conceived and created by Nisa Mars. This is an original body of work, and I retain full authorship and creative ownership over all elements. These works are created with purpose, meaning, and vision.
© 2026 Nisa Mars. All rights reserved.
Unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or use of this content is strictly prohibited. For licensing, artwork sales, or inquiries
RENEWAL
Part 2 'THE STUDIO'
The Studio is a song about the quiet place where my creation happens. It begins in the morning—tea in hand, the sea like glass, flowers opening—and follows the feeling of stepping out of ordinary time and into the creative state. Hours pass unnoticed. The mind softens. The hand moves. The work begins to lead. This song reflects my experience of painting and creating in stillness, where I’m not forcing anything to happen, but listening. The studio becomes more than a physical space—it becomes a doorway. A place where silence speaks, where colors rise from somewhere deeper, and where something ancient and familiar returns. The Studio is part of my seven-song botanical series, where each song is paired with an original painting. Together, the songs, videos, and paintings explore themes of growth, presence, and remembering—rooted in nature and the inner world. This piece is about devotion to the process. About making space. About answering the quiet call to create. Thank you for being here and for listening.
Part 3 'THE rose room'
The Rose Room is a song and visual meditation born from an immersive art exhibition of the same name. 'The Rose Room' show was held July 4th – August 8th, 2025 at The Workshop Gallery, 32 Beach Road, Vineyard Haven, on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. This was not just a gallery show. It was a space you stepped into. A frequency. A conversation between color, glass, sound, and stillness. The walls were filled with original rose paintings on glass as well as many other collections. Each piece carried its own tone, its own breath. Together, they formed a quiet chorus. Viewers often said the room felt alive, as if the paintings were humming, remembering, reflecting something back. The song Rose Room was written directly from that experience. These roses are not symbols in the usual sense. They are not decorative. They are not passive. Each rose is a vessel, holding memory, emotion, and frequency. Painted on glass, they shift with the light, changing throughout the day. What you see depends on when you arrive, where you stand, and what you bring with you. This project lives at the intersection of painting and sound, stillness and movement, object and experience. The lyrics move through the physical space of the gallery and into something less tangible: how art stays with us after we leave the room. How a piece can follow you home. How a rose, once seen, continues to bloom in memory. Each video in this series is paired with an original painting. The visual world you see here grows directly out of the physical work. No separation between the song and the art. They are the same language, spoken differently. Thank you for stepping inside
ABOUT "ROOTED" Rooted is a seven-part botanical series by Nisa Mars. Each piece pairs lyrics then an original song with a handcrafted reverse glass painting and video—telling stories of nature, memory, and quiet transformation. These works explore what it means to be present, to listen deeply, and to create from the ground up.
THE ROSE ROOM
I walk in the rhythm of petals.
The unseen arranges the seen.
What calls to me, calls through me.
And the door opens, right on time.
Part 4 'BOTANICALS'
This piece is a love letter to the natural realms. Botanicals was born from a lifetime of listening to and speaking to plants—not as symbols, but as companions. Orchids in the window. Hands in the soil. Lemongrass on the wind. Fruit trees bending under their own abundance. These are not metaphors to me—they are family, memory, and muscle memory all at once. I have lived close to the earth for as long as I can remember. Born in the tropics by the sea, surrounded by gardens, orchards, and warm air thick with scent, plants and sea creatures were my first language. Orchids were my first muse. Long before I called myself an artist, I was already paying attention—watching how things grow, how they rest, how they bloom when they’re ready. This song is about that quiet education. Botanicals explores the idea that gardens remember us. That roots carry stories. That trees know what we don’t yet have words for. In this world, prayer isn’t spoken upward—it’s planted. It’s whispered into soil. It’s breathed in through basil and jasmine and exhaled through my hands. Every verse moves through a living landscape: orchids, peach trees, mint, fig, mango, avocado, lime. Each plant holds a chapter. Each bloom reflects something back. The garden becomes both temple and mirror, a place where time softens and the body remembers its own wisdom. The refrain “Botanicals raised me” is literal. Plants fed me. Healed me. Grounded me. Taught me rhythm and patience and resilience. They taught me that wild growth is not chaos—it’s intelligence. The visuals in this video are part of that same conversation. Each piece in this botanical series is paired with an original painting, created as an extension of the song itself. These paintings are not illustrations—they are portals. Living artifacts that carry the frequency of music, the land, and memory This work is part of a larger body exploring nature as collaborator not subject. Not something to be used or observed from a distance, but something we belong to. I was never lost. I was blooming the whole time. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here., you are right on time.
Part 5 'RETROGRADE'
Retrograde is not about going backward. It’s about recalibration. This song and video are rooted in my largest and most defining exhibition to date—a one-day-only solo show at the Grange Hall in West Tisbury on Martha’s Vineyard, held July 15, 2025. In a single room, for a single day, I showed 222 original paintings, each one created with intention, memory, and precision. Every wall we built was full. Every piece spoke. The space became a living archive of collections, cycles, symbols, and lived experience. The number 222 is not incidental. It represents alignment, balance, and the moment when multiple paths converge. In that room, my botanical worlds, ocean work, glass paintings, and symbolic systems all existed at once—orchids breathing beside ocean creatures, geometry layered over memory, glass reflecting glass. It wasn’t a retrospective. It was a convergence. Retrograde captures that moment. Astrologically, retrograde is often misunderstood as regression or delay. For me, it has always meant something else: a chance to pull energy back in, to review, to refine, to realign. This song speaks to that internal movement—the choice to walk “backwards through the flame” without losing momentum, to bend instead of break, to claim authorship over time itself. Glass is a central metaphor here. I paint on glass. I work with reflection, fragility, and strength simultaneously. Glass doesn’t shatter easily when it’s respected—it bends, it refracts, it holds light. That’s the philosophy behind this piece, and behind the show that inspired it. Every lyric in Retrograde is anchored in lived work: • “Two-two-two, the walls were full” is literal • “Every frame a Zodiac” speaks to cycles and systems • “This ain’t paint—it’s memory” is how I approach every piece The video pairs the song with imagery that echoes the show’s atmosphere—layered, reflective, ceremonial. It is not documentation. It is translation. Retrograde is part of my ongoing series ROOTED, where each song is paired with an original painting and a visual world. These works are meant to stand alone, but also speak to each other across mediums—music, glass, canvas, and moving image. This is not rewind. This is alignment. *NEVER ONE EYE SYMBOLISM Thank you for being here.
RETROGRADE
Retrograde, I move with time. The bend reveals, not breaks. I flip the frame, change the game. Name’s still Mars—remember the name.
Part 6 'RED BUTTERFLY'
RED BUTTERFLY by Nisa Mars Red Butterfly is a visual poem about becoming—quietly, without force. Set in a surreal, futuristic botanical world, the red butterfly moves through light, color, and breath. She doesn’t announce herself. She doesn’t chase meaning. She simply is—and everything grows around that truth. This piece explores feminine power without spectacle. No crown. No name. No performance. Just rhythm, presence, and flame. The imagery unfolds like a dream: painterly, ethereal, and alive. Stillness is the foundation. Motion is the accent. What remains after the storm—after the cry, after the truth—floats gently into view. Red Butterfly is not about arrival. It’s about remembering. Not gone. Just everywhere.
🎶 Original music and lyrics by Nisa Mars 🎨 Visual world inspired by her tropical life and Red Butterfly paintings on glass Part of an ongoing visual storytelling project called ROOTED Thank you for being here.
ABOUT ROOTED Rooted is a seven-part botanical series by Nisa Mars. Each piece pairs lyrics then an original song with a handcrafted painting and video—telling stories of nature, memory, and quiet transformation. These works explore what it means to be present, to listen deeply, and to create from the ground up.
She came without warning.
No announcement. No reason.
Just a flicker of red through the dreamspace—
soft as breath, sure as flame.
Red Butterfly arrived like that.
Not as a concept, but as a feeling. A frequency.
And I followed.
Later, in the gardens of my home in Panama,
I saw her again. Real this time.
Red wings, sudden and silent—cutting through the heat.
She had always been with me. I just hadn’t named her yet.
This piece carries something ancient and flame-bright.
Feminine power without spectacle.
No crown. No announcement. Just presence,
and the way everything starts to grow around that kind of truth.
Part six in Rooted, my seven-part botanical series.
This one’s personal. A painting on glass. A transmission in red.
Original music, lyrics, and visuals by me.
She came from there. From my time in the tropics.
From the orchids in the trees.
From the heat and the memory. From something I can’t explain,
but absolutely recognize.
Watch the video. Feel it land.
She’s not gone. She’s everywhere.
And she’s right on time.
Part 7 'LIME TREE'
I was born in the tropics, by the sea, in a small stone cottage where the air was warm and the light moved slowly. The ocean was never a destination—it was simply there, breathing beside me. The trees, the salt, the wind, the rhythm of days shaped something deep in my nervous system before I ever had language for it. The lime tree has followed me through my life like a quiet companion. Wherever I’ve lived, I’ve planted one. In pots, in yards, in orchards. It’s a tree that doesn’t rush, but it also doesn’t forget how to give. Fruit, shade, scent, medicine. It asks for sun, patience, and care—and then it offers joy without ceremony. This song came from that place. Lime Tree is not just about a tree. It’s about roots. About what happens when you grow up close to nature and never quite leave it, even when the world pulls you elsewhere. It’s about the way certain landscapes imprint us forever—the way heat, salt air, and green abundance can wire you for slowness, for observation, for listening. Growing up by the sea taught me rhythm. Tides don’t argue. Seasons don’t perform. Things arrive when they’re ready. That understanding has shaped my art, my music, and the way I move through life. I don’t rush inspiration. I let it ripen. The lime tree in this song represents continuity. A living witness. A reminder that joy can be cultivated quietly, over time. That nourishment doesn’t need spectacle. That some of the most important relationships we have are with the natural world—and with the versions of ourselves that first learned how to belong there. This song is an offering to that origin point. To the warmth. To the sea. To the trees that raised me as much as any human did. If this song feels familiar, if it stirs something gentle or ancient in you, it may be because you carry a place like this inside you too. Let it grow. Each song in this series is paired with an original painting created by me as part of the same creative process. The music and the visual artwork are not separate projects—they are companions. The paintings inform the songs, and the songs inform the paintings, growing side by side. For Lime Tree, the painting acts as a visual anchor—an extension of the same memory, landscape, and feeling that shaped the music. Color, texture, and form carry what words and melody sometimes cannot. Together, they create a fuller story, one that can be seen as well as heard. This approach reflects how I work across all mediums: sound, image, and meaning unfolding together. Each video in this series represents a complete piece—song, painting, and story—born from the same source.
Final transmission in the Rooted series
By Nisa Mars
In every home I’ve ever lived, there’s been a lime tree.
Not just outside—inside.
A big potted lime, by a window, near the light.
She travels with me. Keeps watch. Grows quietly.
And when I finally put my hands in the soil of my land in Panama,
I planted forty four citrus trees. A whole orchard.
Limes, lemons, oranges—sunlight fruit.
That land still hums with their sweetness.
The Lime Tree is the final transmission in the Rooted series.
It’s citrus and soul. Memory and joy.
A shimmer of green. A drop of gold.
The kind of sweetness that doesn’t ask for attention—but never goes unnoticed.
This song is for her. For all the limes.
For the ones in pots, and the ones with deep roots.
For the guardians that have followed me through lifetimes,
always blooming, always near.
Thank you for walking through this garden with me.
The Rooted series is now complete.
To everyone who’s watched, listened, commented, messaged, or just quietly received these songs—thank you. You’ve been the light on the path. Every kind word has landed in my heart like a seed, and I’ve felt it. Truly. This Rooted series came from a deep place in me, and knowing it found a home in you means everything. I don’t take it lightly. You are seen. You are appreciated. You are part of this blooming.