Artist’s Statement:

There’s a pamphlet for Fibromyalgia and it explains people with Fibromyalgia and their pain and emotion and everything as like barbed wire. So, the scale goes from a normal person or a regular person, starts out as big flowers, right, and they get smaller and smaller and then as you get into Fibromyalgia, the barbed wire gets bigger and bigger. So it makes sense about how a person feels. Is a person rising from the ultimate pain, coming out of the barbed wire? I think the barbed wire and the flowers are more showing the emotional state of feeling pain, anxiety, and all your worst fears and sickness, to reaching the side of being healthy and rising from that. The phoenix, and down below, the warrior with the staff or spear, I tried to explain the rising up from the lowest point in your life to maybe being a warrior. It’s also intertwined with the barbed wire and the flowers. You rise from a painful point to like stop and smell the roses almost. You couldn’t care less about smelling roses when you’re down and out and at the worse, but when you’re rising up as a phoenix to smell a rose would be like “wow I feel great, I can smell the roses.” A phoenix symbol is the phoenix rises from the ashes, in my opinion. You rise from the ashes from your worst to the highest point. I came to the realization that I think I’m really describing where I’ve come from on my past journey, which is part of my Fibromyalgia battle.