This body of work begins with my body.
I paint directly onto raw canvas with movement, pressure, and breath—letting instinct speak before language. The marks become a record of sensations I carried for years: anger, shame, grief, and the quiet wish to feel whole again. On top of that physical history, I build a new one.
I bead and embroider the wide, shimmering eyes of girlhood—eyes shaped by anime, Sailor Moon, and the soft friendships of an earlier time. These eyes once held wonder before they learned to disappear. Returning to them is a way of returning to myself.
Embroidery is the language I borrow from women I never got to learn from directly—my grandmothers, and the long chain of unnamed women before them. Stitch by stitch, I piece together what was fractured, mending through repetition, rhythm, and care. The needles echo lineage. The beads reclaim ornament as power.
In some works, a digital cursor or selection box interrupts the softness of the hand-stitched surface. These symbols act as metaphors for the choices I make now: what I revisit, what I release, what I transform. They hover over tears the way I hover over memory—deciding whether to circle back or choose a different path.
This series is an act of reclamation.
Of girlhood. Of joy.
Of the parts of me that learned to be small and are now learning to shine again.
Each piece is a gesture toward the little girl inside me—
a way of saying: I see you. I’m staying. You deserved tenderness all along.