Pacita Abad debuted her Underwater Wilderness series in 1986 following her newfound love of scuba diving and the natural beauty she found underwater. “You cannot beat nature—[it is] fantastic when it comes to colors and quite unusual when it comes to shape and texture,” the artist wrote in her journal in 1985. To capture the variety of colors and textures, she utilized her famous “trapunto” quilted canvases — after padding and stitching a canvas, Abad then painted and embellished the surface with buttons, sequins, mirrors, thread, and yarn. The Far Side of Apo Island, a large-scale trapunto work, depicts a group of tropical fish amid a coral reef; Apo Island in the Philippines is a popular dive site home to over 400 species of coral and more than 600 species of fish. Dense layers of vibrant paint, coupled with the rippled texture of the canvas, add to the painting’s texture and movement. The work’s dynamism is further enhanced by the addition of sequins, plastic buttons, and contrasting paint streaks, all contributing to the immersive quality of the underwater scene.