(60” x 48”) Oil on canvas 2024-2025

This piece was based on my personal struggle with severe menstrual pain and how I yearned to transform my suffering into a powerful visual narrative of healing and empowerment.

I've dealt with this debilitating pain since I was a teenager. My suspicions have always been endometriosis, especially since my pain grew far worse over time to where I’m always having to be bedridden. I would eat or drink water and immediately throw everything up out of pain. Pain relievers stopped working alone, and the pain would be so excruciating it would keep me up all night. It took me 17 years to finally have a doctor agree to operate on me to see once and for all what was causing this torture. Only my worst nightmare came true where nothing was found and I was back to square one.

Distraught and unsure of how I was going to keep living this way, I wasn't sure what to do next. I had over-exhausted my go-to alternative methods that had seemingly worked for other women, whether it was diet changes, various forms of fasting, herbal remedies, etc. I hated being silent and had zero concern over being embarrassed anymore. I didn't feel heard or understood at all, and I didn't want my pain over all these years to be in vain. Yet, having experienced in the past a painting manifest in my reality while working on it, I figured I might as well take matters into my own hands on canvas in order to change my situation, but this time consciously. I would utilize the knowledge I've accumulated over the years on magic, manifestation, and symbolism to assist in this project.

This painting was an alchemical ritual of sorts in that initially my sole purpose was to transmute this pain into healing whatever has been causing it. It then evolved into something far greater and more universal, that the feminine energy in everyone is wounded and needs healing in order for us as a collective to evolve into a higher conscious world. The earth goddess, Gaia, is used as a symbol for the feminine archetype. She represents the woman who is in any kind of pain imaginable, the anima of a man, and our planet earth in general. Her eyes are shielded to represent those of us who have felt unseen. She could represent anyone in that sense as her identity is concealed.

I wanted to test myself if I could paint something inspired by the old masters. However, the figures in this painting are based on an abstract concept depicted in physical form. The archangels, for instance, are being depicted in a Renaissance style rather than being a literal representation of how they would actually look. Everything was strategically planned, from specific angelic healing symbols in the background to the angelic seals of the archangels themselves depicted on their pins so that their energy is invoked.

The Ana BeKoach, also known as the 42-letter Name of God, was a prayer included and imprinted in Hebrew at the very bottom. I was told this prayer in particular is one of the most powerful in existence and is known to evoke miracles. Furthermore, I instinctively incorporated the menstrual blood of one of my worst episodes I've had in a while with the red oil paint of the depicted blood on canvas. There is a plague doctor on each bottom corner lurking in the shadows as well, symbolizing the modern day medical industry and how we as humans are still in the dark ages of medicine, especially regarding women's health.

According to the Yuga Cycle and various other prophecies, our earth is currently shifting into a new aeon and undergoing a purification process. Ayurvedic medicine specifies that a woman's menstrual cycle is also a purification process itself, since women are able to receive excess without becoming impure due to our defined rhythmic period for apana vayu (the downward flow of energy) during menstruation. We receive and consume without energetically hoarding, therefore purifying whatever we receive through this bloodshed. This time of shedding this destructive, purifying outflow for women is what allows for the rich, new spaciousness of creation that comes during ovulation. This may be where the misconception of period blood being impure comes from when it is actually a sacred and powerful substance in which women throughout history have used for tantra and various magical practices. It is not that period blood is impure and that it purifies women, but rather because it is a discharge of excess and disorder which keeps a woman balanced. This is how I view the disorder and chaos on our planet today. The old ways that don't serve us must be destroyed in order to allow a promising new beginning and for balance to be restored.

I personally saw the year 2020 as our planet going through one severe menstrual upheaval and an apparent beginning of this transformation process, since our whole world was affected and has never been the same again. The demons orbiting the womb of earth symbolize the darkness on our planet. The light being casted on earth is meant to be a revealing of this darkness to the public eye and that it is currently in the process of being destroyed. Feminine energy is rebalancing itself on our planet and is a very inward journey. Our world has been hyper focused on the external for far too long. The more an individual does their part in their own healing, the more the collective consciousness will ascend, and the better our world will be. This painting is supposed to be a testament to the belief that through acknowledging our wounds, we can begin to heal not only ourselves, but also everything around us.