'What the Water Holds’ From Displacement to Renewal
By Judy Abel · Sun Aug 16 2026
After the Palisades Fire displaced Dr. Daniela Schweitzer, the Malibu artist and clinical geneticist transforms uncertainty and resilience into a new solo exhibition
Despite displacement from her decades-long home in Malibu following the Palisades Fire, artist Daniela Schweitzer is thriving artistically, headlining a solo exhibition in Orange County, as a featured artist in “Carving Canvas” at Malibu City Gallery, and all while balancing her career as a clinical geneticist.
Although her home is still standing following the devastating 2025 fire, her neighborhood was mostly destroyed while her home suffered severe smoke damage. The past 19 months have been marked by uncertainty and displacement, but ultimately with renewal as those experiences have become the foundation of What The Water Holds/Lo Que Guarda El Agua, her solo exhibition at Sue Greenwood Fine Art in Laguna Beach, opening Aug. 6 during Laguna Art Walk. The exhibition features 15 new paintings completed over the past year, the first body of work Schweitzer has created since she and her husband were displaced.
Not expected to return to her Malibu home any time soon due to extensive remediation work needed, Schweitzer unexpectedly found a new source of creative inspiration.
"In the wake of the Palisades Fire, we stayed for about three months in a house close to the Venice Canals, owned by good friends from Malibu," Schweitzer said. "It helped us get to know the neighborhood, and we really loved being close to the water, the canals and the beach."
That temporary stay eventually led Schweitzer and her husband to find a longer-term rental nearby. What began as a period of upheaval evolved into a daily practice of walking along the canals and the shoreline. Her walks were filled with quiet moments that gradually found their way into her paintings that reflect tranquility and placidity.
"Venice has really given a lot back to us," she said. "Long walks along the canals and the shoreline offered continuity during a period of uncertainty. The movement of water, the rhythms of nature and the serenity of those landscapes found their way into my newer work, deepening an ongoing exploration of memory, resilience, belonging and renewal."
Running through Sept. 21, What The Water Holds/Lo Que Guarda El Agua reflects those experiences, using water as both subject and metaphor. While Schweitzer has long explored themes of human connection through figurative painting, the new series expands that conversation, examining how landscapes can carry memory, offer healing and bridge places that feel emotionally intertwined.
"Water has become an increasingly important companion," Schweitzer writes in her artist statement. "Rooted in memories of Argentina's beaches and the ocean landscape surrounding my home and studio in Los Angeles, water represents connection itself—an expansive, fluid force linking places, memories and people across distances."
Born in Argentina, Schweitzer discovered her passion for art at just six years old when she began studying in a classical atelier, where she spent the next 12 years learning traditional drawing and painting techniques.
When Schweitzer initially made her first brush strokes, "I knew I had found my world," she writes. "The same visceral feeling of color and possibility and the unmistakable scent of oil paint still greet me each day in my Santa Monica studio, decades later. The urgency to create has never left me."
Her artistic journey eventually brought her to Los Angeles, where she balances a career as a clinical geneticist with a growing multidisciplinary studio practice that now encompasses painting, hand-built ceramics, and printmaking.
"My career as a clinical geneticist has taught me to look closely at people and the details," she writes, "and art has been the way I move beyond precision and into ambiguity, intuition and feeling—the emotions hidden beneath the surface."
Art historian Hannah Sloan says Schweitzer's work is driven by "the challenge of capturing fleeting moments in time," whether through "an unguarded gesture, a passing emotion, or the trace of a hand shaping clay before it disappears."
Although Schweitzer's practice includes ceramics and printmaking, the human figure remains at the center of her work. "What interests me is not creating likeness, but presence—the quiet moments of vulnerability, connection, and shared experience that reveal something universal."
Those themes have resonated beyond the studio. Schweitzer recently received First Place in the painting division at the Malibu Art Association's 30th Anniversary Tracy Park Gallery exhibition in 2025 after earning an Honorable Mention in the Triton Museum of Art's 2024 Statewide Painting Competition and Exhibition.
While this new exhibition grew from an unexpected chapter in her life, Schweitzer sees it less as a story about loss than about transformation.
The paintings, filled with luminous blues, layered textures and quiet reflections, suggest that healing often arrives gradually—through familiar rituals, changing landscapes, and the enduring pull of water.
"What The Water Holds/Lo Que Guarda El Agua" opened with an artists' reception on Thursday, Aug. 6, during Laguna Art Walk at Sue Greenwood Fine Art in Laguna Beach. The exhibition continues through Sept. 21.
See more of her artwork at Daniela Schweitzer Fine Art.