Bullseye. Mixed media on paper, 18x12, 2016.

Artist Statement

The images on this page are from the body of work: Vulnerability, Trauma, and Redemption: Healing the Family Soul. Specifically, this work reflects the parallel, sentient processes of mixed media art-making and healing from the psychological shattering of childhood sexual abuse. Rooted in Jungian depth psychology, the work follows the psyche’s instinctual movement toward integration—through shadow, symbol, and creative alchemy.

Each step in the art-making process maps to a psychological state inherent to trauma and recovery.

Cutting imagery speaks to the initial trauma—wounding, fragmenting, disintegration, dismantling, and the soul loss that occurs as one is separated from Self and others.

Arranging and rearranging imagery reflects the psyche’s attempt to adapt, to gather the scattered pieces and explore possible configurations of identity.

Landing imagery signals moments of recognition—when what has been reassembled begins to feel known, coherent, and claimed as Self.

Gluing imagery anchors that recognition, expressing the tentative, vital commitment to the possibility of a unified, reimagined Self.

Painting imagery deepens this process, offering grounding, consolidation, and synthesis.

Reintegration and Witnessing completes the cycle: the Self is seen, confirmed, claimed; the reintegration of Self into the energetic network of all that is becomes possible again.

Through this work, I invite viewers into an archetypal journey of descent and return—one that honors the ruptures of trauma while illuminating the enduring drive toward healing, connection, and wholeness. These images are not merely representations of suffering, but living symbols of transfiguration. In bearing witness to this hidden, inner terrain, the work offers a visual language for the recovery process—where vulnerability becomes strength, fragmentation becomes form, and what was abandoned is recovered, revived, and transformed.