The tiny canoes that travel down the girl’s face are paintings by the Italian Surrealist painter Leonor Fini. In the left canoe is a self-portrait by Leonor Fini and in the right canoe is The Angel of Anatomy painting also by her. The self-portrait represents life and the skeleton in the painting on the right symbolizes death.

Hardships tends to leave an ugly stain on our souls. Bitterness which arises as a result of a lifetime of disappointments, heartaches, pain, hardships and loss often results in a comfortable bitterness that settles in during old age. My struggles with a bitter heart inspired this work. But the truth is that love is a much more powerful force than darkness. For it is love that fills up the dark souls of the suffering, and jumps from heart to heart. Darkness tends to shrink our souls.

But just knowing that love is more powerful than bitterness doesn’t mean that change can happen. Some of us are just too broken to fix.