Excerpt:

In this essay, I explore the quiet guilt and confusion that grew from my time at UCLA — how learning about systemic oppression left me feeling voiceless, and how, in trying to respect others’ stories, I began to lose my own. As a descendant of Cockney Irish laborers and European settlers, I carry a dual inheritance: both oppressed and oppressor, survivor and participant. Through reflection and art, I’m learning how to hold both truths — to reclaim my heritage without denying the pain it’s tied to. This piece is about that process: the reckoning, the reconciliation, and the healing that comes from creating beauty out of contradiction.

The Silence of College Years

When I was at UCLA, surrounded by brilliant voices from marginalized communities, I often felt like I should shrink. I carried guilt for what my ancestors had done — for systems of oppression I had indirectly inherited. I wanted to respect the space of others, to honor their reclamations. But in the process, I felt compelled to quiet my own voice.

I became cautious with my words — uncertain of what I should or shouldn’t say. I struggled with language, afraid that any attempt to engage might be misread or cause harm. I understand now that this stemmed from my own insecurity, but regardless, over time, I began to silence myself. And beneath that silence was a deeper unease — as if the culture around me, the collective reclamation of marginalized voices, had replaced my own sense of identity. I admired their strength and truth, but in the shadows of that awakening, I began to hide my culture out of shame.

As a heterosexual woman — and an older student — I struggled to find my community. Don’t get me wrong, I made some wonderful, lifelong friends along the way, people I still hold dear. But even within those friendships, I often felt slightly out of place — like there was an invisible, unspoken line between us.

That line wasn’t caused by any conflict or tension. Most of my close friends were LGBTQ+ or people of color, and those relationships deeply enriched my life. But they also made me hyper-aware of our cultural and social differences, especially within the context of what we were studying. Because our discussions at UCLA often centered on race, gender, and systemic power — that awareness became a constant undercurrent. Every reading, every conversation, was a reminder of what white colonial systems had done — the harm, the dominance, the silence that followed.

I agreed wholeheartedly with the need to confront those truths. But the deeper I went, the more conflicted I became about my own cultural identity. I felt included, but only up to a point — conscious that I would always stand on the other side of that history, —haunted by self-inflicted erasure. It was a line I felt, but not one that necessarily existed — at least not for my colleagues. It’s important to note this, because it came from my own awareness and sensitivity to imbalance and injustice coupled with my desperate need of cultural grounding.

Pulled Under by History

At times, as we were collectively raising up marginalized communities — which was both necessary and long overdue — it felt to me that we were quietly invalidating others. There was an undertone that blurred the line between condemning historical systems and condemning the cultural identity of the people connected to them.

In those classrooms at UCLA, surrounded by difficult and important conversations, I often felt pulled under by that undercurrent — because of the weight of history pressing on all of us. For me, it became personal. It felt as though my entire cultural identity had come under scrutiny. I carried shame — a heavy, aching kind of shame — for the harm done by people who looked like me. I didn’t know what parts of my heritage I was allowed to honor or what traditions I could pass to my children without guilt. As I began to distance myself from my own people, I felt I had no cultural home.

Looking back, I understand that this dissonance had to happen. I needed to confront the grief and the guilt to find clarity. That process was my identity crisis, and also my evolution. Through it, I began to see that love for one’s culture doesn’t have to mean denial of another’s pain. I could honor my ancestors — the poor laborers, miners, and mothers who fought to survive — while also acknowledging the harm done by others in the same lineage. I could love the Black Hills my family cherished while grieving what was taken from Indigenous peoples.

That paradox is the truth of history: every culture carries both beauty and violence, resilience and harm. We can’t undo the past, but we can choose how to live with it — what to keep, what to release, what to grow from. That’s what I try to do now: to reclaim what nourishes and let go of what wounds. That’s what growth looks like.

And that, I’ve realized, is exactly what I do through art. My paintings hold all of it — the contradictions, the reverence, the reconciliation. On the canvas, I don’t have to choose between shame and pride, oppressor and oppressed, dark and light. They coexist, as they do in me.

A Dual Inheritance

As a descendant of Cockney Irish, I know cultural shame on that side as well. At the turn of the 19th century, my ancestors were labeled “dirty Irish” in the East End of London, pushed into slums, treated as lesser. That story lives deep within our DNA.

My family fought with all their grit to rise above those stereotypes. My grandmother’s immaculate home — so clean you could literally eat off the floors — was not just pride, it was survival. I understand now that her obsessive cleanliness was a fight against erasure — a fight against shame.

And yet, my story doesn’t stop there. My heritage also ties me to colonizers, to systems of power that harmed others. This is what makes my inheritance so complicated: I am both oppressor and oppressed. On one hand, my ancestors bore the weight of poverty, displacement, and stigma. On the other, they benefited from — and in some cases participated in — structures of dominance.

Whether directly or indirectly, we carry the shame. Even if the actions were generations before us, they ripple forward into how we are seen, how we see ourselves, and how we either hide or embrace our culture. My dual inheritance is also, in many ways, a shared inheritance — because the weight of shame and the strength of resilience ripple through generations, not only my own.

The Weight of Colonial Guilt

That inherited shame doesn’t just belong to me — it echoes through many of us. Colonial guilt doesn’t silence; it distorts. It tempts us to distance ourselves from our own heritage instead of transforming how we understand it. It makes us question what we’re allowed to love, what we’re allowed to reclaim. And in that questioning, we risk losing the pride and belonging that come with knowing who we are and where we come from.

For me, it wasn’t only that my culture was erased — it had to be hidden. Hidden out of embarrassment, hidden out of shame for the actions of generations before me. And in hiding it, I lost parts of myself. I lost the songs, the pride, the rituals, the sense of belonging that comes with community and lineage.

But I am reclaiming that now — not with defensiveness or denial, but with love and forgiveness. I am learning to embrace my family’s heritage with open hands, to see it not as a stain but as a story, one I can tell truthfully and tenderly. And in doing so, I am also honoring the river of subcultures that have flowed into me, my husband, and our children’s lives — the ideals, influences, and practices that have woven themselves into who we are, a living blend of past and present cultures breathing together.

This blending is visible in my art — in its layers, textures, and colors that echo both my lineage and the diversity of the world around me. This is not about separation, because separation only breeds disparity and resentment. My goal is blending — to stand out culturally, yes, but to do so as a tapestry, woven of my family’s heritage and the other cultures I respect, embrace, and claim as part of me.

That’s what I paint: the meeting of histories, the coexistence of contrast. The way color and form can collide without canceling each other out. That paradox — oppressor and oppressed, shame and resilience — is not something I can resolve with logic alone. I work it out in my art. On the canvas, I let both sides speak: the splintering shame of oppression, the blooming resilience of survival. The dark weight of being tied to oppression, and the fierce grit of rising from it. I weave those contradictions into color and form, into something that refuses to be reduced to one side of history.

Clarifying What This Isn’t

I want to be clear: I don’t want to go back. Not to the stories we were taught in school. Not to a colonial version of American culture that erased the histories of marginalized people and told only part of the truth. That version of “heritage” was never whole, and it can’t be our destination now.

What I see — and what I’ve lived — is that we are in the midst of a cultural identity crisis. Our collective longing for equality has collided with our need for belonging. People of every background are trying to find footing in both equality and identity — searching for a way to love their culture without diminishing another’s.

Cultural identity is not a luxury; it’s a form of survival. It shapes our foods, our stories, our languages, our art — the very ways we understand ourselves. We need to allow space for all of it: for reparations and reclamation to coexist, for pride and accountability to live side by side.

In my own journey, through education and through art, I’ve learned that I can hold both truths. I can support the voices of marginalized people while also embracing my heritage — Danish, Irish, English, and more — with love, curiosity, and compassion. I can honor the beauty in other cultures while recognizing how deeply those cultures have influenced and enriched my own.

This, to me, is where we’re struggling as a nation. Many white people, uncertain of how to love their culture responsibly, have turned fear into resistance. But the answer isn’t retreating to the “good old days.” It’s learning how to stand in the present — grounded in our histories, respectful of others, willing to evolve.

Closing Vision

If guilt keeps us paralyzed, creation sets us free. The civil unrest we feel today, I believe, is rooted in this very tension: the inability to embrace our culture without shame, the unresolved conflict of oppressor and oppressed living side by side in our blood. We cannot heal by erasing ourselves. We must exist together — all cultures side by side — each embracing truth with honesty and responsibility, but also with compassion and pride.

Through art, story, and connection, I am reclaiming my heritage — not in opposition to others, but alongside them. Not to erase, but to create. And in that act of creation, I believe we can all begin to find our way home.

Splinter & Bloom — a continuing story of art, memory, and meaning

Excerpt:

Freedom is like light — fragile, luminous, and vital. When it’s extinguished, the world dims. But every act of creation — every color chosen, every mark made — is a way of keeping that light alive.

Seeing Through an Artist’s Eyes

As an artistic empathist moving through the world, my eyes are drawn to details. I notice what shimmers with authenticity and what fades into pretense. I sense what’s unspoken, reading the room, feeling the undercurrent.

And what I see unsettles me: polished surfaces, perfect smiles, plastic-faced mannequins — Stepford Wives brought to life. On the outside, everything looks flawless. But beneath it all lurks deception and lies, depravity, and void of integrity.

The crushing weight of fear and injustice brings me to recoil in hopelessness, to bury my head and pray that someone will stop the madness. But I know that shrinking and hiding won’t save or protect us. If anything, it only guarantees that our creative freedoms will be extinguished — like the torch of the Statue of Liberty, snuffed out when silence and conformity take hold.

Yet freedom’s light is not so easily erased. It flickers in every act of imagination, in every brushstroke of resistance.

Longing for My Art

In difficult times like this, when my mind is heavy with the state of our nation, I long for my art. But sometimes it feels almost impossible to reach for my brushes — and there are days when I can barely push myself to paint.

Yet even through my pain and discouragement, I know I must move beyond the weight of it all, and in those moments, I reach for my art journal, paint, and brush to wash my emotions across the page until my spirit rises and I become grounded and connected once again to my ideals.

That creative moment becomes a small but mighty act of rebellion. Even the tiniest spark of creativity is a refusal — a demand for change, a resistance against being silenced, against numbness, a cry for freedom.

A Collective Gallery of Power

When freedom of choice is taken, expression withers and dies — starved of creative breath.

True freedom is not only about what we can say or create — it is also our right to make meaning for ourselves. Meaning-making is deeply personal — it sits at the core of our identity. And when power tries to dictate that meaning, it robs us of our agency.

Our art is a call for truth, courage, and freedom.
Together, our creations become a living testimony — a collective gallery of power.

The old saying is true: there is power in numbers. And as we gather as creatives and freedom-seekers, we become more than individuals — we become a movement.

A movement that answers oppression with color, fear with creativity, and despair with expression.

Through our paintbrushes, through our words, through our actions, we color the world with hope; we paint through fear and despair — and we take back our freedom.

Finding Courage to Stand

Yes, there are days when I feel the weight so deeply it attempts to shut me down. But every time I take one small step — moving through the urge to give up, choosing a color, making a mark, allowing creation to break through the noise — the darkness begins to break, and I find my courage to stand up.

Because together, all of our actions add up to something much bigger. A toe in the water becomes a ripple, then a powerful tide of resistance.

Closing — Freedom as Creation

In the end, every mark matters. Every choice of color is a declaration. Every act of creation says: we are still here, still creating, still free.

The truth is, freedom cannot live on silence or sameness. It requires many colors, many voices, many visions woven together. A single brushstroke cannot carry the whole weight of hope, but together our strokes form a canvas wide enough for all of us.

Art reminds us that freedom isn’t only the right to speak, but the right to imagine — to shape meaning in ways that only we can. And when we create, we keep that freedom alive.

So I ask: what creative action will you choose today?

Splinter & Bloom — a continuing story of art, memory, and meaning

Excerpt:

Religion begins as story but often hardens into law. Art has been used the same way — to awe, to scare, to enforce. But unlike religion, art has a way of splintering back into freedom. My own paintings of trees, blooms, and cosmic skies are my way of telling stories that don’t conform, but invite.

Picture this

Imagine if all art looked the same. Imagine if the only paintings allowed were abstract. Or only landscapes. Or only portraits.

At first, it might feel orderly. Predictable. Easy. But soon, it would become unbearable. Expression would wither. Voices would vanish. The canvas of our collective life would be reduced to a single shade.

Faith as story, not monopoly

Religion, like art, tells the story of existence. But these stories don’t arise in isolation — they splinter and reshape as people move, marry, and form new communities.

A flood remembered in one place becomes a flood retold in another, altered with new details, adapted to new landscapes, woven into new rituals. It’s like the old telephone game: a story whispered through generations changes as it travels, but its core experience remains recognizable.

Floods, rebirth, heavens, origin myths — they echo across cultures not because one faith “borrowed” them, but because human beings were living through the same elemental events, then shaping them into the languages and symbols of their time.

That’s the beauty of difference. Many stories, one shared human experience — splintered, re-imagined, and expressed through culture and faith.

Religion as paradox — story and conformity

But here’s the paradox: religion is both storytelling and conformity. At its best, it carries memory — tales of flood, rebirth, community, morality. At its worst, it freezes those stories into doctrine.

What began as symbolic becomes literal. What began as shared becomes legislated. Religion offers rules that help people coexist, but those same rules often demand sameness. Faith becomes law, and difference becomes threat.

Art as paradox — conformity and expression

Art has walked this same paradox. Much of the earliest European art was commissioned by the church — frescoes, icons, stained glass — designed to awe, to instruct, and to scare people away from “pagan” practices. For centuries, monks and priests were among the only ones who could pay artists.

And literacy was a privilege. Most ordinary people couldn’t read Scripture or doctrine, so images became their Bible. Saints, demons, floods, heavens, hells — all painted larger than life to conform belief through vision when words couldn’t reach. Art wasn’t just decoration; it was legislation in color and form.

And yet art never stayed confined. Even in cathedrals, human expression slipped through — in the curve of a face, the shimmer of a color, the individuality of a hand at work. Over time, art broke away from its strict religious role: the Renaissance, Impressionism, abstraction — each movement splintered toward freedom.

That’s the difference I see: religion tends to calcify stories into law. Art can be used for conformity, but it has an unstoppable tendency to bloom again into individuality.

A personal encounter

Not long ago, someone dismissed me because I said I wasn’t religious: “What could you possibly know about Jesus?” they asked.

The irony is, of course, everyone knows Jesus — just as everyone knows Picasso or Van Gogh. You can understand their place in the story without painting like them. You can respect their influence while still making work that speaks in your own voice.

What troubles me is when someone takes a figure — whether Jesus, Buddha, Odin, Freyja, or any revered prophet — and turns them into a puppet for their own agenda. It would be like someone a thousand years from now saying, “This is what Kelly would want, so we must all do it in her name.” It strips away autonomy and replaces it with assumption.

I don’t paint to be Van Gogh; I paint to be Kelly. In the same way, Jesus should be allowed to be Jesus. Buddha should be Buddha. Freyja should be Freyja. None of them deserve to be reduced to enforcers of conformity. The truth is, none of us today know them. We only interpret fragments handed down across centuries. And when someone insists they know a revered figure better than anyone else — maybe even better than the figure knew themselves — that becomes less about faith and more about power.

My art as living story

Religion, myth, and art all carry ancestral memory. They hold fragments of what people experienced — floods, births, deaths, mysteries — and retell them in new forms.

I’ve noticed this happening in my own work. Lately, without planning, I’ve begun framing my cosmic, floral, and fauna designs with branching trees and leaves — almost like stained glass made of nature. At first, I thought it was an aesthetic choice. But now I see how deeply it connects to these very conversations: the World Tree, cycles of renewal, the way stories branch and intertwine.

I don’t “decide” to paint these forms. They emerge intuitively, as if carried in me. They feel like echoes of the same stories humanity has told for millennia — stories of life and death, darkness and light, destruction and renewal.

My paintings don’t seek to conform anyone to one meaning. They tell a story — of blooms, skies, creatures, and cycles. They share my encounters with the world and invite others to bring their own.

Closing – Diversity as beauty

Faith and art, at their best, don’t demand conformity. They tell stories of existence. They remind us that difference is not error, but expression.

The truth is, no single brushstroke can capture the universe. No single faith can tell the whole story of being human. We need many hands on the canvas, many stories in the circle, many ways of seeking meaning.

Because difference isn’t a threat — it’s the very texture of beauty.

Splinter & Bloom — a continuing story of art, memory, and meaning

Excerpt:
Our country’s cultural tapestry is under threat, but on my canvas it lives on — a colorful patchwork of identity woven from Latin vibrancy, Cockney Irish fire, and Scandinavian folk traditions. My art is both celebration and resistance, proof that diversity doesn’t divide us, it makes us whole.

Our autonomy is being threatened as politics attempt to unravel the living tapestry of cultures that give our country its depth, memory, and sense of belonging. We are living in the midst of cultural genocide sparked by words that breed hate and justify raids, bans, censorship, and erasure. This is happening in real time: the stripping away of tradition, identity, and community.

Art is a form of resistance. It speaks back. It tells the story of difference as beauty, of a collective community as a living canvas woven together by many cultures. It nurtures, sustains, and carries forward the identities that power would rather silence.

What Art Has Taught Me About Community

On my own canvas, I see this clearly: the colorful patchwork of identity that shapes me. The vibrancy of Latin and Mexican influence I grew up with in Southern California, the cheeky fire of my Cockney Irish ancestry, and my ancestral Scandinavian folk art and traditions — blending together through color, texture, and form.

This integral weaving of cultural identity plays out directly on the canvas — each brushstroke becoming part of a tapestry that mirrors the diversity within me (and, by extension, the diverse communities I belong to). My art represents how enculturation happens in daily life: through diverse neighborhoods and the vibrant exchange of traditions that shape who we are together.

My art doesn’t ask which identity is allowed. It insists on the expression and intersection of all.

Against Homogenization

We live in a time when some want to press everything into sameness — one way of speaking, worshiping, or belonging. The danger is that our cultural identities are being washed out into one, as if difference itself is a threat. Homogenization is the stripping away of nuance — the attempt to erase distinct cultural expression and autonomy.

But art resists. Art is a form of preservation of culture. It pushes back, it argues for our people, for our diversity. It speaks when words are censored. Identity thrives in plurality. Expression is healthiest when it’s layered, messy, alive. To paint is to claim that right: the right to live authentically, the right to honor the cultures and communities that shaped us without apology.

A Riot of Color, A Living Canvas

Each brushstroke, each riot of color, is part of a diverse whole. Together, they form a living, breathing expression of community — proof that difference doesn’t divide us, it makes us more vibrant, more human, more alive.

If someone were to cut those threads — the Mexican and Latin influence of my community, the colors and folk patterns that saturate Los Angeles life — I would unravel. These cultures are chords that make up who I am, as vital as my bloodline or birthplace.

Without this tapestry, I would lose my identity. The essence of who I am would be diminished.

Cultural Diversity Beyond the Canvas

When I travel to places with less cultural diversity, I feel its absence immediately. I feel uncomfortable, like something is missing. Even if I’m surrounded by people who look just like me, there’s still something missing when I’m not embraced by the cultural groups that shape me and take me in as an Angeleno. Diversity is my identity.

In Los Angeles, diversity isn’t entertainment or tourism; it’s life; It’s the breathing, feeling, living pulse of daily exchange that enriches who I am and, ultimately, the art I create.

This is the heart of Splinter & Bloom: a vision of cultures, histories, and memories colliding — blooming into something that refuses to be contained.

Closing Thought

In the end, I cannot stop the forces that seek to erase culture or flatten difference — but I can paint against them. Each canvas becomes my refusal: color instead of conformity, texture instead of silence, plurality instead of erasure. That daily act of creation is how I hold on to identity, how I honor community, how I resist.

Splinter & Bloom — a continuing story of art, memory, and meaning

Excerpt:
My family’s history is steeped in obedience and control, but my art seeks another path. In a world where violence and extremism are reshaping our collective psyche, I turn to the canvas to make sense of the chaos — to cover the dark with light, to find healing where the world fractures.

Roots in Obedience, Seeds of Questioning

My ancestors crossed the plains from Sweden and England to build the Salt Lake Temple in Utah. They left families, were disowned, and gave their lives to a system that demanded obedience. That heritage runs deep. And by the time I was thirteen, I was already standing in baptismal fonts, dressed in white, performing rituals for the dead — and quietly wondering why it all didn’t make sense.

Those questions never left me. They grew with me. Over time they became less about the church itself and more about how I live, how I create, and how I make meaning.

Faith, Control, and the Cycle of Violence

What I saw then, I see now: religion — and politics that borrow its energy — often equate obedience with virtue. Recruiting others becomes “service,” but beneath it is confirmation bias: if more believe as I do, then it must be true. It’s not just faith. It’s control.

This week, tragedy hit the headlines again. A man has died, not just a man but a father, a husband, a son. I won’t lie: part of me feels a certain relief when someone who spread hate can no longer harm others. But that does not mean I would ever wish them dead. It’s an ugly paradox — wanting the harm to stop, while knowing that violence only feeds the cycle. And the truth is, death doesn’t end an ideology. It often immortalizes it, turning a man into a martyr in the very movement that created the harm in the first place.

“You Reap What You Sow” — Conformity’s Cost

My great-grandfather, Ephraim Bjorklund, used to say: you reap what you sow. He said it as a Mormon, with the weight of that faith behind his words. And while I’ve left the conformity of religion behind, I still hear the truth of that phrase. Because when what we sow is control, indoctrination, or forced obedience, what grows is division, hate, and harm. Sowing conformity does not yield freedom; it only stifles humanity.

The Weight of Chaos on an Empath

And I feel that echo everywhere. I feel it in the violence in our streets, in the imbalance in our government, in the unspoken conformity demanded in our culture. I feel it in the weather itself, chaotic, destabilized. Energy — whether you call it psychic, spiritual, or collective — doesn’t disappear. It ripples. And right now, it is tearing through everything.

As an empath and intuitive, this weight is heavy to carry. I feel it in my chest, in my nervous system, in the way my hands move over a canvas. Some days my brushwork is sharp, intricate, frenetic — mirroring the world’s intensity. Other days I bury the dark beneath layers of calming light, painting my way into balance when I can’t find it outside. My art shifts constantly because my emotions shift constantly. But every layer is a record of living in this moment, in this chaos.

Art as Rebellion, Art as Healing

Perhaps art itself is a kind of rebellion — a way of breaking through damaging norms, of refusing the obedience that systems demand. Each canvas is a quiet act of resistance against conformity, a declaration that humanity is more than control.

The Common Thread of Creativity

In my heart, I want my art, along with my words, to illustrate the healing that happens when we create from that common thread of creativity we all carry. It doesn’t require conformity. It doesn’t require laws. It only asks for expression, humanity, and empathy.

I sometimes wonder: if the people who spend their lives enforcing conformity could stand in front of a canvas, palette in hand, and paint from their heart — what would they see? Would they recognize the beauty of non-conformity? Would they glimpse their own soul? Would they, maybe, be moved to change?

Because what I know is this: systems that divide us — religion, politics, extremism — will never heal us. They will only keep reaping what they sow. But creation, expression, art — these are acts of resistance and renewal. They are ways of saying enough is enough.

And if I refuse to conform to one faith, one ideology, one identity, it’s because I’ve already lived the weight of grooming and obedience. I don’t want obedience. I want humanity. And painting is how I choose it, again and again.

Closing Thought

In the end, I can’t control the cycles of hate or the chaos in the world — but I can choose what I sow. I can choose color over fear, expression over silence, and creation over conformity. That choice, made again and again, is my act of rebellion, my act of humanity.

Splinter & Bloom — a continuing story of art, memory, and meaning

Intro

There is a time of day I’ve always loved. The moment when light softens, when summer evenings shorten, when the world seems to sigh. Dusk feels like a cool, comforting blanket, a quiet permission slip. It tells me, you can rest now.

That time of day is more than atmosphere — the changing light itself is a language. It breathes life into my art, filling it with both vitality and deep comfort. It is how my paintings come to life, in a felt story of experience.

Darkness as Rest and Grounding

People often fear darkness, equating it with sorrow, danger, or loss. But to me, darkness has always been where I find rest. The deep blues and shadowed tones in my art aren’t threats — they’re safety. They are the embrace that says, you don’t have to shine all the time.

The interplay of light and dark is essential — like yin and yang, sweet and sour, the balance of contrasts that can’t exist without one another. It mirrors the balance of life itself, of good and bad, joy and sorrow. In my art, that interplay becomes a way of lifting myself out of trauma by reaching for the light, even as I find comfort in the dark.

Light, Dark, and Fluorescence as Immersion

Light breathes life into my art, protected by the twilight of the setting sun and the blanketing darkness of dusk. That’s why I’m drawn to fluorescence, to colors that spark with their own electricity, and to deep tones like indigo and purple that cool and balance their brilliance. Together, they carry a life of their own, evoking not just vision but sensation — a world you can feel.

They invite immersion into a sanctuary where light and dark hold each other — a safe place, a dangerous place, an exhilarating place, and always a welcoming place to come home. In many ways, this is my language, my home — the place I return to again and again.

Bright Colors as Passion and Expression

Then come the bursts — hot pinks, corals, golds, colors that vibrate and almost hum on the surface. They are passion, romance, vitality. They are joy, rage, humor, rebellion, and the sensual pulse of being alive.

These colors aren’t just chaotic energy. They’re the soul insisting on its right to be expressed. They’re laughter, desire, curiosity, even mischief. They remind me — and maybe remind others — that life is not only grief or grounding, but also sweetness, exhilaration, and play.

Art as Language Without Words

In those moments, I am captured — engrossed, as if I’ve slipped into another world. It is my intuitive, nonlinear voice speaking, drawing me deeply into the very marrow of the work.

Painting becomes a way of navigating and reshaping the world I carry inside. Trauma, memories, and emotions flow through, as do joy, passion, and love — pieces of the self that often lie trapped, even dormant, longing for expression. They are redefined, realigned, released into a safe haven, an expressive language where I can breathe, exhale, excel, and expand.

This is a language stronger than words. A language of color. A story painted rather than told, a visual story of life and experience, expressing what words cannot hold.

The Struggle for Balance

Painting is never just about applying color. It is a negotiation — between light and shadow, chaos and calm, freedom and structure. The canvas becomes a mirror of my inner life: the longing for freedom held in tension with the need for grounding, the drive to expand balanced against the safety of boundaries.

Maybe that’s why finishing a piece can be so hard. It isn’t only about the art. It’s about waiting for that elusive moment when the painting itself finds equilibrium, when chaos and calm finally meet in the middle.

Dusk as a Universal Language

Dusk gives me permission to stop and notice the color of light and its interplay with dark. It is perhaps the most beautiful time of day besides sunrise — a settling of things, a quiet harmony, a reminder that beauty can exist in the in-between.

When someone stands before my work and feels a flicker of recognition — calm, longing, joy, sorrow, humor — it isn’t just my story they’re seeing. It’s theirs, too. Art becomes the bridge, dusk made visible, chaos and calm living side by side.

Closing Thought

I live, like many of us, in the in-between. Not just in shadow or light, not just in grief or joy. My art doesn’t try to resolve the tension. It lets both exist, layered and alive.

Just like dusk — that gentle, fleeting, necessary time when the world exhales.

Splinter & Bloom — a continuing story of art, memory, and meaning

There are things we carry that no one can see. Layers of grief, rebellion, memory, and the stubborn spark of a self that never stops speaking, even when words fail. My art began as a way to move my hands, to make marks, to play with color. I didn’t know it was the language my inner world had been waiting for.

When I paint, I am not just arranging colors. I am negotiating with chaos and grounding.

The hot pinks, the wild fluorescents—they come like emotional surges, bright and insistent, demanding to be seen. They are passion, romance, and heat—the pulse of being alive. Chaotic, electrifying, sometimes rebellious, but also joyous, defiant, and sensual. They carry the vitality of a spirit that refuses to be quieted.

Then there are the deep blues, the inky blacks, the shadows of my work. People sometimes think darkness means danger, fear, or sorrow. For me, the dark is where I finally breathe. It is dusk after a too-bright day, the calm that says, you can stop now.

The painting moves between these extremes—light into dark, dark into light—layer after layer until it finally feels balanced. It becomes the moment when chaos and grounding finally meet in the middle.

My art is not a coincidence. It is not accidental. It is my life speaking through color.

Childhood Fragments

I think about the clay duck sometimes. The school assignment where I rolled the clay into a log, squeezed it between my fingers so it looked like a turd, stuck a bill on it, and handed it in: there’s your duck. My mom laughed because she knew instantly which one was mine. Even then, I was giving them what they asked for—but in my own way.

That same child stared at the blue belt hanging in the kitchen—the threat behind every rule—as she climbed onto her stool and poured her soggy Kellogg’s Cornflakes down the sink while her mother showered. The same meal, served every single day. Breakfast wasn’t just breakfast. It was a command, and the rebellion was small but certain.

I feel these memories when I paint. Not consciously, but intuitively. Experiences and emotions rise up in the colors, in the shapes, in the wildness that will not be tamed.

Grief, Anger, and the Palette of Memory

When my mother died, I painted a piece so black and angry I couldn’t bear to look at it. It was heavy with what I couldn’t say. Ugly with grief. Seeing my emotions in that form was unbearable. I threw it out. It was discarded.

Art like that isn’t for keeping. It’s for surviving.

The Dusk Between Chaos and Calm

People talk about trauma like it’s a single story. It isn’t. It’s layers. It’s nurture and nature, memory and body, rebellion and longing, expression and structure. My art lives in that space between chaos and calm, between the fluorescent burst and the grounding dark, between the self that needs freedom and the self that needs scaffolding to stand.

This is why I paint circles, blooms, shapes that feel botanical. I have always been drawn to nature—the growth, the seasons, the way light gives way to dusk and dusk to darkness. I love that time of day when the light softens and the world exhales. It feels the way my paintings feel when they finally come together: chaos held by calm, wildness held by something steady and quiet.

Making Meaning Out of the Weight

I didn’t set out to make trauma art. I set out to live. To breathe. To stop carrying so much. But the weight comes through anyway—in the color, in the movement, in the push and pull of my compositions.

And maybe this is what I hope for most: that my work gives others what it gives me. A way to speak without words. A way to rebel safely. A way to hold both chaos and calm, passion and quiet, in the same breath.

People think abstract art is mysterious, hard to understand. But for me, it is the most honest language I have—a beautiful expression of spirit.

Closing Thought

I don’t know if I would have created this work without the trauma, without the ADHD, without the complicated love of a complicated mother. I will never know. What I do know is that the paintings keep coming, and each one feels like another piece of my story finding its way into the world.

And maybe that is enough.

Splinter & Bloom — a continuing story of art, memory, and meaning

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