She Talks to Angels: When Survival Becomes Power
Sometimes a painting shows up with a whole personality attached, and She Talks to Angels (song link here) was exactly that kind of moment. This piece marks the beginning of my new Black Wing Series, a darker, sharper expansion of my Sacred Heart work — portraits for women who are finally choosing themselves after a lifetime of choosing what was expected.
There’s something powerful about black. It tells the truth without dressing it up.
She Talks to Angels started with the song — I’ve always loved it because it hits that tight spot in your throat. Not for the drama people attach to it, but for what sits underneath: the loss, the reaching, the moment you feel yourself slipping… and something inside you decides to rise anyway.
And sometimes the “angels” we reach for aren’t soft or sweet; they’re fierce, dark, and a little unruly. They don’t comfort you — they ignite you. That’s the energy behind this piece.
She Talks to Angels borrows a little energy from The Black Crowes, but in my world this girl’s angels don’t show up in white. Not innocence — just survival dressed up as spirituality, the kind women know all too well, especially the ones who were raised to be agreeable and easy to handle. When that’s the role you’re handed, you learn early how to cope, and most of us paid for it by losing pieces of ourselves along the way.
This isn’t a painting about pain. It’s a painting about what happens right AFTER—you know that moment where you stop sinking and start kicking your way back to the surface? That’s what this is.
Black wings aren’t a fall from grace. They’re a promotion.
There’s a moment in life — maybe you’ve felt it — where drowning stops being an option. You stop waiting to be rescued, and something in you decides to rise. That fierce shift women make when they finally choose themselves.
Most of us have had that moment where we feel ourselves drowning a little, grasping for something bigger just to stay upright — and pretending we’re fine while we do it. She’s the part of you that stopped pretending. Her black wings aren’t a fall from grace; they’re a refusal to play along. They’re a decision. The moment you stop performing the “good girl” routine and start choosing yourself. Same energy as the little black dress that changes your posture the second you zip it up.
In the song, the angels are coping mechanisms. In our world? They’re the parts of us we buried just to survive — now showing up in black wings and saying: enough. And if that hits you in the chest, it’s because you’ve carried those quiet battles outwardly while inside you raged too.
This piece isn’t about pain. It’s about what comes after — the moment you walk away from “acceptable” and back into who you were meant to be. The gold roses symbolized the potential you were born with — the kind that gets buried under other people’s rules and expectations until you get tired of living under the shit they call fertilizer and decide to grow.
Maybe you know that tight-throat feeling too — the clenched jaw that comes when the world expects you to stay small while your heart grows wide. But this isn’t a painting about that. It’s a painting about what comes next. The rising.
What wings are you choosing these days?
ME??? My wings are Bougie Punk- PURE elegance with a switchblade tucked under the hem.
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