Roe V. Wade is Gone. Here's My Art, and My Anger, on the Canvas.
I’m not an artist who sits on the sidelines. If the world is on fire, you’ll find me with a palette and a match. When the Supreme Court delivered the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, stripping away a fundamental right to bodily autonomy for half the population, the bottom fell out. It wasn't just a political defeat; it was a cold, brutal statement about who is disposable in this country. The shock turned instantly into a searing, white hot anger that I had no choice but to channel.
And this is what that rage looks like: "The End of Roe V. Wade."
This painting is not subtle, and it's not meant to be. The piece shows a stark, almost cartoonishly grim female figure, a symbol of the everywoman. She’s standing in a pool of deep, visceral red, the blood of her autonomy, with a dark, defiant red 'V' over her womb. In her hand, she holds the terrible, sickening symbol of desperation: the coat hanger. This is not a metaphor for a future worry; it’s a chilling reminder of the past we were supposed to be past.
A Formal Critique of Urgency: Style, Symbolism, and Stripped Down Truth
My work, especially in a piece this charged, is a direct challenge, and it’s built on a visual bedrock that runs thousands of years deep.
My style is a blend of the monumental and the immediate. It’s a synthesis of Ancient Mayan, Egyptian, Indian, and Ethiopian art, cultures that spoke through bold, graphic forms, mixed with my modern love for graphic design. This is why the figure is so flat, so reduced to an essential symbol; it echoes the powerful, iconic silhouettes of friezes and hieroglyphs, presenting a truth that is both universal and timeless.
Crucially, every line you see, the bold borders, the stark geometry, the clean color fields, is freehand painted with no stencils. This commitment to painting the entire image by hand introduces a necessary tremor of human imperfection, a breath of the soul that counters the mechanical feel of the design. It makes the urgent message intensely personal.
The Figure: The figure’s profile and static pose recall the eternal forms of ancient art, making her a symbol of enduring human rights, not a passing trend. The almost blank, Cream-colored form against the electric, unsettling Sky Blue background is a color scheme designed for impact, ensuring she reads as a universal every-figure.
The Lines: The characteristic bold, sharp outlines that separate the colors are my hallmark. They are drawn from the heavy, defining lines of graphic illustration, yet they hold the slight, necessary waver of the hand, a direct signature of my process.
The Symbolism: The Violent Red is the crisis point. It’s the blood, the rage, and the defining political disaster contained within the flat, iconic structure. The coat hanger remains the central, harrowing object, a terrifying symbol of desperation that grounds the iconic style in a brutal, current reality.
This style is about using form to serve function. It strips away all noise to present a message with the force and permanence of a carved relief. And the message is an emergency.
The Enduring Resonance of a Necessary Fury
Art is a conversation with time. Its deepest value lies in its power to stop a fleeting, seismic moment and render it permanent.
When a canvas carries this level of urgency, it ceases to be mere surface and pigment. It becomes a point of moral gravity, an unblinking witness that keeps a necessary truth from being diluted by the passing of weeks or the shifting of headlines. Its presence within a space acts as an unflinching anchor to a pivotal moment of cultural betrayal, a persistent vibration against complacency.
This particular work, with its freehand lines and its fusion of ancient, iconic structure with modern, furious subject matter, possesses the kind of weighty permanence you find in artifacts of historical consequence. It doesn't offer comfort; it demands clarity. It doesn't allow you to forget the raw, terrifying reality the coat hanger represents. The painting, in its stark, unflinching form, transforms the environment around it, turning a private wall into a silent, resolute declaration of where one stands when rights are revoked. Its enduring resonance is the very essence of its importance: a visual document, etched by hand, ensuring that this moment in history remains loud and visually present for all the moments that follow.
