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Image 1 of 1
Image 1 of 1
Image 1 of 1
Acrylic on Canvas
24×24
Meet “Emily.”
Emily lives in stark contrasts. Painted in black and white, she embodies the duality I experienced growing up: the absolutes of religion: right and wrong, sacred and profane, and the complexities of real life that never fit so neatly into those categories.
Church was a place of refuge for me as a child, a sanctuary that gave me rhythm, structure, and moments of hope. But it also carried rigid, sometimes dangerous, expectations that I had to unlearn as I grew older. Emily sits at the very front of the sanctuary, where devotion is most visible, where many eyes are on you. That choice matters: she doesn’t hide in the shadows of the back pew. She claims her place, contradictions and all.
Her cigarette is more than rebellion. It’s ritual. It’s escape. It’s survival. The small flame in her hand becomes her own prayer, her own form of control in a space that often dictated who she was supposed to be.
Through Emily, I wanted to hold both truths at once: the beauty and the burden, the devotion and the disillusionment. She is a portrait of what we carry forward, what we leave behind, and the ways we keep breathing in between.
Acrylic on Canvas
24×24
Meet “Emily.”
Emily lives in stark contrasts. Painted in black and white, she embodies the duality I experienced growing up: the absolutes of religion: right and wrong, sacred and profane, and the complexities of real life that never fit so neatly into those categories.
Church was a place of refuge for me as a child, a sanctuary that gave me rhythm, structure, and moments of hope. But it also carried rigid, sometimes dangerous, expectations that I had to unlearn as I grew older. Emily sits at the very front of the sanctuary, where devotion is most visible, where many eyes are on you. That choice matters: she doesn’t hide in the shadows of the back pew. She claims her place, contradictions and all.
Her cigarette is more than rebellion. It’s ritual. It’s escape. It’s survival. The small flame in her hand becomes her own prayer, her own form of control in a space that often dictated who she was supposed to be.
Through Emily, I wanted to hold both truths at once: the beauty and the burden, the devotion and the disillusionment. She is a portrait of what we carry forward, what we leave behind, and the ways we keep breathing in between.