MEDIUM : Watercolor on paper
DATE : 2025
Fiery Heart
By Jay Ells
This week’s piece is a confrontation — an icon of inner contradiction and unapologetic revelation. I call it Fiery Heart.
At first glance, the figure may resemble a saint or monastic guardian: bald, bearded, tranquil-eyed, adorned with a radiant golden halo. But the harmony is immediately ruptured by what emerges from his chest — not a sacred emblem, but a crowned beast, eyes wide with intensity, mouth ablaze in flame and defiance. It is not hidden or ashamed. It is central. It is the heart.
In Fiery Heart, I wanted to confront the illusion of inner stillness by bringing the hidden turmoil to the surface. The halo — a symbol of enlightenment and divinity — frames the head, giving the impression of peace, holiness, transcendence. It’s a visual promise we’ve come to expect from spiritual iconography. But that calm is broken wide open by the beast at the center of the figure’s chest — rendered with jagged fire, bulging yellow eyes, and a tongue stretched out in raw emotion.
The creature wears a crown, and this detail matters deeply. The beast is not enslaved. It is enthroned. It rules the heart, and the figure does not deny it. This is the real dichotomy: not between good and evil, but between the seen and unseen, the serene and the storming.
Behind the figure, I placed a red and cream brick wall — an orderly grid representing structured belief, systems of control, social norms. But the figure doesn’t fully blend into that background. Instead, he becomes a disruption of it — something more human, more flawed, more whole.
The piece is done in watercolor, allowing me to build transparent layers that reinforce the symbolic divide: the face and shoulders are washed in soft, ghost-like hues, lending the saintly aspect a feeling of fragility, as if it might fade at any moment. In contrast, the beast is drawn in bolder pigments and more decisive lines. It crackles with life. The fire in its mouth bleeds slightly into the surrounding area, suggesting that emotion, once unleashed, cannot be neatly contained.
The symmetry of the composition — face aligned, shoulders squared, beast centered — plays into the idea of intentional balance. There’s no chaos in the form. All chaos resides within the heart.
There’s a subtle violence in Fiery Heart — not of destruction, but of revelation. The crowned beast bursting from the chest doesn’t represent something to be feared or tamed, but something to be acknowledged and even honored. It’s the raw force of feeling, the part of us that burns with instinct, longing, anger, passion — and ultimately, vitality.
To feel deeply is to live fully.
The calm face of the figure is not at odds with the wild heart; instead, he wears his inner fire like a badge of authenticity. In that, the work becomes a meditation on radical self-acceptance. We are not meant to be only serene, only sacred, only still. We are also the roar beneath the ribs — crowned, fierce, alive.
“Let the heart burn — not to destroy you, but to illuminate your path.”
Fiery Heart reminds me that strength doesn’t come from silence or suppression, but from integration. The fire within us can consume or can guide — and when we choose to see it, name it, and carry it with grace, we transform that fire into light. Not purity despite our contradictions, but because of them.
“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.”
— Kahlil Gibran
Add comment
Comments