Like most of my work, there is a lot of symbolism and personal meaning that went into this piece. First of all, the title of it is “‘Vigorated.” No, that is not a typo. It is short for “invigorated.” This quirky title shows my playfulness and how I look for ways against the conventional, which is usually reflected in my titles. The main idea of this piece is to express the rush I felt from having received the Holy Spirit. This was a few months after I was saved at my friend’s church so I still felt very consciously the Holy Spirit inside me. Some people have said that being filled with the Holy Spirit feels like a river rushing through their heart stomach area. I do not agree with this weird, kinda gross image. For me, it has more felt like what light looks like, but I don’t know how to draw that. It has also felt to me like a gush of wind, the kind that catches you off-guard and invigorates. So that is why I created this image full of wind and passion. I included a cross on the girl’s neck and thin crosses on the breasts of the birds to tie it back to the Holy Spirit and Christ. It is also to express the emotion of joy, because when I was creating this piece, I felt actual joy for the first time in many years. Not “happiness” which is not as powerful and is based on outside circumstances, but joy. I wanted to give to others that feeling of joy, even for the few seconds they glance at my piece. I wanted to give a piece of that to my viewers. Another thing I might add, because this causes a lot of questions, is the purpose of the Band-Aids. I put Band-Aids on several of the figures I draw/paint. This is because I want my figures to have imperfections. That is what gives them humanity. That is what makes them real. You know, a lot of female figures you see in art look like goddesses—even, clear skin, hour-glass figure, etc. I didn’t like that. It seems so fake and boring to me. Sometimes I even include freckles and blemishes or something of that nature on my figures, as well as the Band-Aids. In this instance, my figure has cuts which she is bleeding from a little. Another meaning of the Band-Aids, which goes hand in hand with the imperfection thing, is that you can be beautiful no matter how imperfect you are or how many times you have felt pain or have been hurt. I wanted to communicate visually, like how Vogue and other fashion mags communicate that only perfection from following certain standards is beauty from the way it is presented, that you can be beautiful while being imperfect. In fact, that’s where the more genuine beauty comes from anyway. Imperfection. Because imperfection gives way to individualism, diversity, personality. I love how in this piece, there is pain in the form of blood and bandages, but that is not the main idea of this piece. And isn’t that a great metaphor for life? Life is bittersweet. It is unrealistic to declare that every aspect of your life is negative and sorrow-filled; it is also unrealistic to say that life is perfect and everything is great. But you can have an imperfect life and an imperfect past, and still choose to focus on and express joy.