Exorcise Regularly

11x14”
Acrylic on Canvas
2023
Available

It is a piece about using art to process inner demons and how it gives us a safe space to freely express the sides of ourselves that we try to hide away. When you're a sensitive neurodivergent blob masquerading as a hyper-independent impenetrable chaos dragon, it's impossible not to take on extra weight, even if it's the mask you wear getting heavier and heavier.

This past year I found myself questioning all of my behaviors and beliefs. I questioned everything I knew about my identity, trying to sort out what is Mask and what is me. I noticed that after I started the unmasking journey, little …quirks… bubble back up to the surface that I forgot were there.

Art gave me the space to be able to explore all of this territory as if it were new, as if I'm getting to know myself again for the first time.

This process of shadow work taught me to remember to call myself into question and process behaviors, trauma responses, and social conditioning that don't resonate with me and no longer serve a purpose for me to be a functioning human, and rebuild the neural pathways to heal instead of hide.

It reminded me to exorcise regularly.

2022

Spikes Pointed In

11x14”
Acrylic on Canvas
2022
Available

The mask gets thick, and I fill the cracks with mud until I can’t recognize myself. I’m spiky, but the spikes are pointed in, and every time I move, they poke in further. Many of the things that I thought were shining facets of my soul were actually prismatic fractures of shattered glass.

Struggling with chronic mental health problems is absolutely exhausting. It’s been a fight ever since I was a kid to not succumb to my darkest thoughts, and the idea that this will continue on for as long as I inhabit this body gets so daunting and exhausting that sometimes I wonder how I’m gonna make it and find any kind of lasting tranquility or healing in it…

On the flip side… I feel like my experiences in shadow inform my understanding of the beauty of light and allow me to feel it in a way that a lot of people struggle to, and that’s the beauty I try to capture in my art… those moments of shining clarity are the ones that I continue dredging through the mud for… I guess they do say beauty hurts, huh?

2022