The Guardian Within

MEDIUM: Watercolor on textured paper

DATE: 2025

The Guardian Within

As a child, age 6, I begged my mom, “I want to give you a kiss!” We were not a kissing family. Finally, she bent down to receive her kiss. I bit her cheek as hard as my little teeth could sink into her flesh. We both jumped back. “Oh mom! I am so sorry!” She recoiled, but she did not hit me, spank me, or say anything.

Many times, she had said, “I raised you as I raised my horses.” Some years later, I read that horses, at some time during their training, bite their trainer to show that they do not like their training and want their trainer to know this.

When I was age 6, I used to say to myself, “When I get big and am seen to behave perfectly, I will kill myself to let mom know how much I hated this training.” From ages 5 through 10, I worked on many pictures to make the eyes as mean as possible and the teeth snarling with jagged, sharp pieces.

And yes, those feelings are still here. This piece came out of me like a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

I had no plan—just a face, a feeling, and a need to articulate the contradiction I’ve been carrying: the tension between presence and protection. This is what emerged: A quiet human expression hovering over a roaring, uncontainable beast. Both are me. Neither though is the whole truth alone.

At the top: a face. Neutral. Almost serene. Painted in soft yellows, it radiates a quiet light. The red and yellow headband wraps across the forehead like a crown or a restraint, and I still can’t decide which. Maybe both. There's symmetry here, a suggestion of control. But I didn’t want it to feel too peaceful. There’s an alertness behind the eyes.

Below the chin, the form splits open into something primal. A mouth stretched wide, filled with jagged teeth and chaotic color. The creature that emerges is part mask, part memory, part myth. Its palette is raw red, blue, and white, outlined in thick, almost ritualistic lines. It looks ceremonial, but it’s also emotional. An exposed nerve.

The creature’s eyes echo the human's, intentionally. This isn’t a demon or an enemy, it’s an extension. A revelation.

Watercolor gives me a kind of contradiction that I love; it invites softness while demanding precision. The upper figure is loose, light-washed, the features fading in and out of clarity. It feels present but untouchable.

The beast, by contrast, is carved in ink. Its shapes are sharp, its lines assertive. I wanted it to feel like it was pushing forward breaking through the surface of the page to be acknowledged.

The edges of the piece are unclean, roughly torn. I kept them that way to preserve the immediacy. This wasn’t a painting I wanted to polish; it was one I needed to release.

This painting makes me feel seen by myself.

It captures the version of me that stays composed in the world, and the one that wants to scream beneath that stillness. Not out of rage, but out of recognition. Out of a need to say: I’m here too.

It’s easy to silence that inner guardian, to think of it as overreaction, or baggage. But sometimes, that force inside is the part of us that kept us alive, alert, intact.

This piece is a thank you to that part.

I used to think I had to choose to be calm or be fierce, be light or be shadowy. But this painting reminded me that real harmony comes from embracing both. The human and the creature. The face and the roar.

As I painted, this thought kept returning to me:

“You are not too much. You are just more than you were allowed to be.”
- Glennon Doyle

And that, I think, is the heart of it.