The Paintings Studio

Sometimes painting helps hold what words cannot.

Before I could fully understand and explain what I was living through, I painted it instead.

These paintings were created throughout the legal battle that followed the first time I reported the sexual abuse in 2019. They became another language my nervous system could still speak when words alone weren't enough.

Each piece captures a moment, question, realization, or emotional landscape from that time of my life. They aren't illustrations of what happened as much as they are visual records of what it felt like to move through it.

Whether you simply spend time with them, find something of yourself reflected in them, or eventually choose to bring one into your own space, I hope they remind you that when meaning exists before language does, there are still other ways to let it be seen. You don't have to carry what your body already knows alone simply because you haven't found the words yet.

Many of these paintings will eventually accompany chapters of Tiny Heart Pieces, where image and story are reunited. The collection below, and the artwork woven throughout the memoir, will also include pieces by other artists whose work reached me significantly in these moments and chapters of reporting in our system amidst a global shutdown. 

Texas Sun 

Overturned 

Many Skies 

Ocean Beach 

Celestial

Crash 

Female