09/02/2026
The Stain
I painted this while living in Uruguay.
By then, I had everything I had dreamed of for years.
A studio of my own.
A heated and air-conditioned shipping container.
The freedom to create every day.
From the outside, it looked as though I was finally standing in the sun.
And I was.
But there was still a stain I carried with me.
Some wounds don’t leave bruises.
They settle somewhere deeper, where only silence can reach them.
Betrayal has a way of changing the way we see the world.
It also changes the way we see ourselves.
Whenever life has wounded me, I’ve discovered there is only one place where healing begins.
Inside.
That’s why her eyes are closed.
Not because she has given up.
Because she has returned home.
The black running across her face isn’t there to represent defeat.
It’s the pain we stop trying to wash away.
The pain we choose to understand instead.
I’ve learned that healing isn’t about pretending the stain never existed.
It’s about allowing it to become part of the painting without letting it define the person beneath it.
Sometimes the strongest thing we can do isn’t to fight harder.
Sometimes it’s simply to close our eyes…
and remember who we were before the world told us otherwise.
