Emotional Anatomy

Emotional Anatomy is a reimagining of Melted Heart, an original painting that was purchased by a repeat collector who recently returned to purchase one of my prints on canvas.

The original began as a paint pour. When the paint settled and dried, I saw something unexpected within it: a naturally formed black and white heart. It was imperfect, fluid, and almost melting into the surrounding paint. I broke the shape apart slightly, followed the movement that had appeared on its own, and named the original Melted Heart.

For this reimagined piece, I built around that same naturally formed heart, adding layers of texture, fractured lines, distressed marks, gold, fiery red, and deep blue. The heart still exists within the chaos, but it is no longer the only thing asking to be seen.

For me, Emotional Anatomy represents the complicated argument surrounding emotions and whether what we feel is real simply because we cannot always see it. I look at this piece as though I am seeing beneath the rib cage, into a place where pain, memory, fear, hope, and healing are moving through the body at the same time.

Scientific heat maps use color to reveal what cannot be seen with the naked eye. In this piece, I used color to represent the emotional heat within us. The fiery reds hold pain, urgency, and the feeling of something breaking. The deep blues carry grief, stillness, and the quiet work of healing. The gold represents what remains valuable, even after we have been changed.

Pain and healing exist together because we cannot experience one without beginning the other.

I am currently healing from a broken ankle and chose not to have surgery. The process has taken much longer than expected, but seeing new bone growth on my X-rays has been incredible. My body began repairing the break before I could see it, before I could feel progress, and long before I had proof that healing was taking place.

That is what I hope this piece reminds you of.

The next time you feel as though you will never recover from heartbreak, loss, or something that changed you, remember that you were designed to heal. Even when you cannot see it, measure it, or feel it happening, your body and spirit may already be rebuilding what was broken.

The healing began before you ever felt the break.

A photograph of the original painting, Melted Heart, is included.

Emotional Anatomy is available as a fine art print or canvas print in sizes up to 20 × 30 inches.

The price below is for a 16x20 print on canvas. Contact us for additional sizes or print formats.