The Pre-Raphaelite Essence
This body of work explores armor as a physical object and a symbolic one. Across the series, armor appears not only as something to be worn, but as something constructed, whether it be through beauty, sanctity, adornment, or the body itself. These works challenge traditional ideas of protection by presenting it as soft, ornamental, or deeply personal.
Drawing from Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics and mixed media practices, these pieces explore how femininity, devotion and embellishment can function as defensive forms rather than vulnerabilities. Together, these works function to suggest that survival sometimes depends not on hardness, but that beauty, adornment, and fragility can coexist with burden, resistance, and survival.
Adornment
This painting, Adornment, is an oil painting on canvas panel, approximately 16x24 inches, incorporating beadwork and botanical embellishment. The mixed-media elements extend beyond the flat surface of the canvas and become a three-dimensional aspect that introduces weight, texture, and physical presence to the piece. The painting is inspired by John Everett Millais, Ophelia (1851-52) and the William Shakespeare play, Hamlet.
Adornment has historically been associated with femininity. Jewelry, embellishment, and ornament have often been dismissed as superficial despite the cultural, spiritual, and social significance. In this work, adornment is used as a form of armor.
The beadwork and surface embellishments in the painting transform beauty into an act of endurance, as each element took time and care to place. The botanicals framing the body act as a protective structure. While adornment has been used to signify devotion, mourning, status, or belonging, in this painting it serves as a response to vulnerability. The act of adorning the body becomes a way to assert control over how the body is seen and remembered.
Beauty is not presented as a weakness in this painting, but a strategy of protection.
Sanctity
Sanctity explores how spirituality and symbolic imagery can function as a form of protection. Situated within the broader project theme of armor, this piece considers how spirituality can serve as a form of emotional or psychological armor. Inspired by cathedral windows and iconographic paintings from the Pre-Raphaelite era, the mixed media artwork presents a contemporary portrait framed within an arched faux stained glass structure.
The piece was constructed inside of a 16x20 shadow box lined with LED lighting to create a glow in the background. Glass paint, hot glue, and puff paint were applied directly to the back of the glass panel to imitate how real stained glass appears. The central figure was painted onto the front of the glass panel in several layers. Lighting plays a central role in the piece. The LED strip lights, when illuminated, intensify the colors of the portrait, and allows the skin to appear as if glowing. This use of lighting acts symbolism, proposing that spiritual presence and inner light act as a form of armor that protects the Self. Additionally, the lighting allows the artwork to be viewed both at day and night time.
Sanctity reimagines traditional religious imagery through the lens of contemporary mixed media.