Valley Bak’s hand reaches skyward.

Painted in bold acrylics on linen, the universal gesture stretches 39.5 inches toward something beyond the frame, beyond the canvas, beyond the moment. The hand exists in a space between worlds, grounded in human experience yet floating in cosmic vastness. Moon phases orbit the composition. Elements of space drift in the background. The inner world meets the outer world on this 25-inch-wide stage.

This is what hope looks like when you refuse to let it go.

Bak, a Boca Raton artist, created “Rising Up From Rubble” as part of Twist Out Cancer’s Brushes with Cancer program, which pairs artists with individuals whose lives have been touched by cancer. But the inspiration for this piece carries an additional weight, a survivor of the Las Vegas tragedy who understands what it means to rebuild from devastation.

“The biggest thing is to use the experiences you have to make an impact,” the inspiration shared.

Those words guided Bak’s brush. In the studio, the artist thought about distance and proximity, about how trauma can make us feel simultaneously isolated and connected to something larger than ourselves. The moon exists in spacetime far from us, yet we all look up at the same celestial body. A hand is the most intimate instrument we possess, yet its shape is recognized across all cultures, all languages.

“I made the painting of the Hand to juxtapose feelings of the inner world with the outer world,” Bak explains in the artist statement. “The hand is universal, reaching upwards, never losing hope.”

The Brushes with Cancer program has facilitated over 787 such connections since Twist Out Cancer’s founding in 2012, creating a global community where survivors, previvors, caregivers, and artists share their stories through creative expression. Each artwork becomes a testament not just to surviving, but to the decision to keep reaching.

Bak sees the painting as an exploration of rhythm, both personal and impersonal, micro and macro, inbreath and outbreath. These oscillations make up our existence, the constant movement between contraction and expansion, darkness and light, falling and rising.

For someone who has survived both a cancer journey and a mass tragedy, these rhythms take on particular meaning. There is the rhythm of treatment and recovery. The rhythm of grief and resilience. The rhythm of ordinary days punctuated by extraordinary trauma. The rhythm of choosing, again and again, to make an impact rather than retreat.

The hand in Bak’s painting doesn’t grasp. It opens. It extends. It persists.

“May we all do our best to move in and out, up and down, around and through this amazing thing called life,” Bak offers as a closing meditation in the artist statement.

The artwork will be auctioned as part of Twist Out Cancer’s mission to provide psychosocial support through creative arts programming. All proceeds benefit the organization’s work connecting people touched by cancer with healing through artistic expression.

But “Rising Up From Rubble” has already accomplished its primary purpose. It has taken two people, an artist and an inspiration, and created an unexpected intersection. It has taken fragments of experience, both beautiful and broken, and arranged them into something that speaks.

The hand keeps reaching.

The moon keeps cycling.

The rhythm continues.

And in that continuation, there is hope.