Self Reflection

This piece contains my real life tattoo. When I added the newest tattoo to my shoulder, I made a deliberate choice to leave the thorns out of the roses. I wanted them to exist as something untouched by pain, soft petals blooming across my skin, free from the sharpness that so often follows beauty.

But perhaps the thorns were never truly gone.

Perhaps they simply found another place to grow.

They remained beneath the surface, twisting through memories, circling old wounds, and becoming tangled within the mind. Invisible to anyone looking from the outside, yet still sharp enough to be felt.

This piece exists in the shadowed space between what the world is allowed to see and what the soul is forced to carry. Roses lie quietly across the shoulder, their black ink reaching toward the heart, while the thorns retreat inward, twisting through memory and tightening around the mind.

It is both a self-reflection and a disguise, a portrait of the distance between appearance and truth. Because what we see is not always what is real. Sometimes the most beautiful parts of us are the ones we choose to reveal, while the sharpest parts remain hidden in places no one thinks to look.

A mirror will always return the face you have taught the world to recognize. But if you stood there long enough, until the familiar became strange and everything buried beneath it began staring back, would you recognize what you saw? Or would you finally meet the part of yourself that has been hiding behind your reflection?

Available in print or print on canvas.