This mixed-media self-portrait is built upon reclaimed plywood, its worn surface becoming both a foundation and a witness to the work’s themes of memory, survival, and reclamation. The body is formed entirely from pages of the artist’s old youth Bible—torn, layered, and reassembled into a fragile yet solid silhouette. Only the eyes remain visible, emerging from the collage like fragments of truth breaking through an inherited narrative.
Around the figure, a soft red glow radiates outward. It reads as both aura and warning—an atmosphere charged with tension, echoing the emotional heat of a past shaped by forced conformity and spiritual pressure.
The use of Bible pages is deliberate and deeply personal. These texts were once used against the artist during conversion therapy, where scripture was twisted into a tool of correction, convincing him for years that something fundamental within him was wrong. Here, those same words are transformed. Instead of shaping shame, they form the very body of the portrait—a reclaiming of language that once wounded. The figure becomes a testament to endurance, autonomy, and the reclamation of one’s own story.
In this work, faith, identity, and resilience meet in a quiet confrontation. What was once imposed becomes re-authored; what once obscured the self now reveals it. The portrait stands not as a symbol of what was taken away, but of what has been rebuilt.
Size in inches W:24 H:35.5 D:0.5
