Scars Series
The Scars Series explores the emotional and physical landscapes of breast cancer through layered watercolor and hand-stitched embroidery, offering a visceral reflection on trauma, healing, and resilience. Rooted in collaboration, the works integrate the artist’s own scars alongside exact representations of scars shared by breast cancer patients from across the country, creating a collective testament to survival and transformation.
Each piece begins with hundreds of layers of watercolor in shades of gray, black, red, pink, and purple, dripped and interwoven to create surfaces that bleed, bruise, and heal over time. These cascading layers reflect the deep emotional and physical impact of breast cancer—the grief, the pain, the healing, and the renewal. The process itself is intentionally labor-intensive, evoking the endurance required to navigate these experiences. The fluidity of the watercolor resists control, embodying the uncontrollable and often unpredictable journey of recovery.
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The scars themselves are stitched directly into the layered surfaces using hand-embroidered lines. These marks are precise, drawn from photographs of the artist’s body as well as recovery photos shared by breast cancer patients. Each thread traces the exact lines of mastectomy scars, reconstruction scars, and other marks left by treatment, transforming deeply personal stories into communal representations. The stitching serves as both a physical act of mending and a visual assertion of resilience, where the lines are raw but also enduring.
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The works emphasize their materiality and invite viewers to engage with the tension between beauty and discomfort. At first glance, the richly layered colors and precise embroidery suggest aesthetic harmony, but as the subject matter reveals itself, the pieces confront viewers with the reality of these scars and the narratives they carry. The tension between visual allure and visceral discomfort mirrors the complex realities of living with and after breast cancer.
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The Scars Series sits within the larger framework of Suspended Self, extending its mission to amplify personal and collective narratives of breast cancer. By transforming trauma into tangible, shared forms, these works offer a space to hold stories that are often unseen or avoided. The scars are not hidden; they are made visible, celebrated, and honored as markers of survival and resilience.
"Scars" series of three (pictured two out of three)
Archival Watercolor Paper
Watercolor Paint
Embroidery Floss
2' x 3' with all three, this work spans nine feet
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This piece bleeds. It is uncomfortable. Layering stripes of watercolor in gray, black, pink, red, and later purple. It represents the emotional and physical wounds and scars of breast cancer. The bruising, the healing, the grief, and the pain.
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This work is 30 layers of watercolor paint, dripped down, and interwoven together. I asked breast cancer patients to share images of their recovery photos and am stitching their scars into the next two pieces. This piece, below, is of my scars in various stages of healing. I took many photos of my healing and could see the lines of my body changed. Deep reds, and blacks, and rose-colored, pinks, and white, scars and healing comes in many shades.
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The work that will come next will be representations of people's stories, experiences, physical and emotional scars. The lines stitched and sewn in are exact lines from women all over the country. The lines are true. The lines share their stories and the lines share mine.
Exhibition History of these Pieces
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"Scars 1"
The Other Art Fair presented by Saatchi Art, Dallas TX
April 2024
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"Scars 1"
Collateral Damage, Pyle Center, Madison, WI
April 2024