Shed My Skin

Created in 2018, this painting reflects a pivotal point in my healing journey, shaped by time spent with Indigenous elders and shamans whose guidance helped to greatly relieve my PTSD. The title speaks to the act of casting off the weight of trauma, shame, and inherited wounds, allowing space for renewal. At the center, a luminous blue head floats in profile, its features rendered as if carved from light. It suggests a self stripped bare, distilled to its essential being. Beside it coils a serpent, its patterned body looping outward in a movement that is both protective and liberating. The snake embodies transformation, a guide through the shedding of old layers, and carries the wisdom of cycles known to the natural world and Indigenous traditions. The surrounding field of deep purples, reds, and blues evokes the altered states of consciousness, ceremony, and vision work that accompanied this process. Darkness here is not absence, but the fertile ground from which change emerges. The work honors the teachings and healing practices that showed me how to walk through the pain of my past without being consumed by it, and to release what no longer serves. It is a record of a passage from constriction into openness, from holding on to letting go.