What Breaks Still Blooms

I’ve always thought my skin was ugly, bumpy, and covered in dots that I couldn’t hide. I scrubbed, itched, and picked at the markings on my body, hoping they would disappear. Being surrounded by people with smooth, unblemished skin felt like torture. Their effortless perfection became a constant reminder of what I lacked. I wanted to shed the parts of myself that felt wrong.
In this piece, I decided to face that discomfort instead of running from it. Rather than agonize over the surface’s flaws, I chose to work with them. Painting a butterfly on a shattered plate became a way to reclaim what I once saw as broken. The jagged shards reflect the unevenness of my own skin, while the butterfly—formed across the cracks—symbolizes transformation and fragile beauty emerging through imperfection.
Painting on a fractured surface was both challenging and freeing. Each brushstroke across the shards reminded me that healing doesn’t mean restoring what was once smooth or whole. It means learning to find beauty in the brokenness, to see strength in what was once rejected, and to accept that even in fragments, something whole can still exist.