Inflammation: Where It Hurts to Stay
Where It Hurts to Stay
Acrylic and Oil Pastel on Canvas
2025
Held ’Til It Hurt
(Acrylic and Oil Pastel on Canvas, 50 × 70 cm)
What if it wasn’t the problem that was hurting you, but the way you refused to let it go?
Held ’Til It Hurt began with that realization.
That sometimes, the pain doesn’t come from what happened, but from the grip we keep around it.
This piece captures the quiet weight of holding on too long. The tension. The tenderness. The moment just before release. A portrait of resistance, and the ache we carry when we don’t yet know how to loosen.
Tried ’Til It Cut
(Acrylic and Oil Pastel on Canvas, 50 × 70 cm)
How much of yourself have you reshaped just to belong?
Tried ’Til It Cut explores the emotional cost of over-adapting. The pressure to balance, please, and meet silent expectations until even moving forward leaves a mark.
This piece holds the heaviness of trying too hard, and the quiet pain of being shaped by standards that were never made to hold you safely.
It’s about the bruise beneath the effort, and the moment you realize it’s costing more than it’s giving.
Artist’s Note
You’re the one hurting you.
Not always on purpose. Not always loudly.
But in the silent ways, when you grip too tightly, or try too hard to fit.
Inflammation is a collection about the pain we cause ourselves while trying to stay safe, stay good, stay enough.
It holds two moments of quiet violence: One where the grip becomes the wound. One where the effort becomes the cut.
This is the kind of pain that lingers under the skin, the kind we carry when we don’t know how to let go, or when the world asks us to shape ourselves too small just to belong.
It’s not about blame. It’s about finally seeing where it hurts—and why.
