in this painting i see a woman whose wounds and suffering are causing her to cry,
she was inspired by a national conflict in one region,
carries identities from others, and yet,
in spite of her pain, the mixtures of her form, she has not given up hope,
for this i ask why, and wonder.
what she taught to me, what i hadn’t understood until learning her story,
is that because life is a creative process,
what is painful at one moment is beautiful at another,
maybe to ourselves, maybe to someone else,
but certainly we must believe, she said, that the creative process of our lives is beautiful,
even if we can’t see the beauty now.