Consumed began during a time when my body was quietly failing me.
About a year ago, I was sick, though I didn’t yet know why. My health was deteriorating, and all I had was a sense that something inside me was out of balance. During that period, I made a painting about closeness—about touch as something that can comfort, claim, or overwhelm.
Red became the dominant colour.
I’ve always loved red and used it instinctively, as a statement—bold, physical, impossible to ignore. At the time, it wasn’t meant to symbolise anything specific. It simply felt right.
Later, I learned I had Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Looking back, the irony is hard to miss. The painting had already named the experience before I had the words for it. What began as an exploration of intimacy had quietly become a record of being consumed—physically as well as emotionally.
I’m in remission now.
From this side of it, Consumed feels less like a warning and more like a marker in time. Proof that the body and intuition often speak before diagnosis, before clarity. The work hasn’t changed, but my relationship to it has.
Bringing the painting onto a t-shirt felt like a way of letting it move forward with me. No longer something fixed on a wall, but something lived in—shifting with the body, existing in the everyday.
Consumed is no longer just about what takes from us.
It’s also about what remains.
🩸 You too can own and wear the art.
