Meet The Work: Know

Meet the Work: “Know” – A Multimedia Exploration of Longing, Healing, and Hope

In my latest multimedia piece, Know, a woman is depicted mid-ascent, being carried away by an angel—an image that serves as both a visual balm and a question mark. The composition is a visual I came across that moved me deeply, and an element I wanted to use in what would be a crucial first piece for me as an artist in my first collection. The work seeks to capture the profound human yearning to know: to understand a life untouched by pain, to imagine a world without cruelty, to glimpse what may lie beyond suffering. This piece is an invitation to sit with that longing, to not turn away from it, but to look closely and consider what it means.

The woman is unclothed, emerging from a place of deep vulnerability, exposed not just physically but emotionally. Her bareness is not about eroticism—it’s about truth. She comes from the wreckage of something unnamed, reaching—hoping—to be carried somewhere safe. Her nudity speaks to the rawness of trauma and the quiet courage it takes to hope for sanctuary.

Rendered in muted pastel tones, the painting radiates an understated softness, reflecting the gentleness that remains in us all—no matter how hardened we may feel. Upon closer inspection, weathered textures, chipped paint, and layered charcoal and oil pastel markings reveal the story beneath the surface. These visual “scars” are intentional, echoing how time, trauma, and healing shape us. They whisper that beauty is not found in perfection, but in truth—the raw, layered truth of being alive.

Threaded throughout the work are delicate gold lines, shimmering yet fractured. These lines have come to symbolize the band-aids we place over painful realities like sexual violence and human trafficking. We acknowledge the wound, the damage, the brokenness—but too often we stop there. The gold becomes a metaphor for how society masks these horrors in a veneer of awareness without action. It’s a visual reminder that recognition is not enough. We must do more than admire the gold—we must dig into the cracks and be part of the change.

Know is more than a painting; it is a symbolic meditation on transformation, on the sacred weight of hope, and the quiet resilience of the spirit.

“Know” is about daring to believe there is more. More softness. More healing. More to uncover.