ART FOR HEARTS
March 1, 2025: I was humbly asked to create a piece for the “Art For Hearts” 12th annual curated art show/event & fundraiser benefitting Pico Youth & Family Center (+ this year, also helped essential workers/displaced residents impacted by the L.A. wildfires.)
This piece, titled “PROTECTION”, was auctioned off & bought by a collector.
I wrote an accompanying written work that was also included with the heart, words recreated below:
xx >>[[ PROTECTION ]]<< xx
“Protection” is about true self.
Our societies and our worlds often teach us to not be open, to be someone else, to please someone else.
To hide who we really are to fit in, to conform, to survive.
Yet within each of us grows an inner tender flower, aching to bloom and cradling our luscious, gleaming, vulnerable heart of true self.
But conditioned by fear and scarred by pain, we surround that origin of truth with walls, with weapons. With spikes that say “no!” with nails that play rough, with barbed wire acting tough while pushing others away with lashing whips of insecurity.
Do we even know our true selves - are we in touch with it? What is true self?
Once we push past the land mines of control and reach into the perfumed beauty of ourselves, only then we can bravely shine forth our own radiant light and connect with the alchemy of others.
I invite you to set aside your emotional weapons and gaze into your own galactic mirror.
Find your blood-born flower, your golden and glorious reflection, your eternal genesis of true self.
Ever present, ever evolving, and everlasting.
~tiina teal / 02.24.2025
@tiinateal / 2 eyes