Three months later, I stood beneath the high ceilings of a gallery filled with light and music. The city’s most influential collectors and critics had come for my first solo exhibition.
The exhibition had sold out before the doors opened to the public. Critics called my work “a visceral, brutal, and ultimately triumphant exploration of survival.”
With an untouched glass of champagne in my hand, I watched a woman in a Chanel suit stop before the centerpiece. She stayed there long after the people beside her moved on.
*The Crimson Marks*.
Black and gray covered the vast canvas, with the crimson s***h cutting through its center. Viewers stepped close enough to study the layers of paint, then backed away to see the whole piece.
For years, those colors had stayed hidden in my sketchbooks.
