This oil painting speaks to the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the catastrophic consequences it has had on millions of lives. This ruling is a stark reminder of the fragility of progress. The right to control our own bodies is central to our identity, our creativity, our power. When that is taken away, it’s not just our physical autonomy that's under attack—it's our voice, our ability to shape our own narrative. This decision strips people of their agency, their safety, and their future. As artists, as women, we must channel our anger into action, ensuring that our stories, our struggles, are not erased.

This painting emerged from a meditation on the uterus, a part of the body where life emerges, and where life is taken away. I was initially ruminating on how the uterus is a battlefield of ideological beliefs in the US that have resulted in extremely negative consequences. The uterus has become a Cowboy Battlefield.

While I was working on this piece the New York Times released a seminal article about forced hysterectomies for female sugar cane field workers in Beed, India. Some get hysterectomies by "choice" so they don’t get their periods and need to take time off the fields because the pay is so low they can’t afford to miss work. Some have no choice and are forced by their employers. These sugar cane fields provide sugar for popular brands such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi. “It’s such a widespread problem that a 2019 government investigation found that, of about 82,000 female sugar-cane workers in Beed, roughly 20 percent had undergone hysterectomies.”

I then began to research how the uterus impacts people globally and quickly became incredibly depressed. There have been reports of forced hysterectomies at the US and Mexico border, in prisons across America, in Ethiopia, China, and in minority ethnic groups such as the Uyghurs. There is so much more I haven’t mentioned but suffice to say, conflict surrounds the uterus globally.

After everything I learned, I felt this painting in some small way could create beauty and reverence for this part of our bodies. A chance to honor the uterus in something beautiful. The mirror in the center of the portal is meant for us to reflect back into this honor and reverence - to claim ownership over the most powerful part of the body.