Spilling My Guts
Medium:
Oil and Acrylic Paint, Fabric, and Mixed Media on Canvas
Dimensions:
16" x 20" x 1"
Artwork for Sale:
Yes
Year Completed:
2026
Description:
Spilling My Guts leans into the idiom of revealing everything--the messy, private, uncomfortable truths we usually keep buried. Here, that idea becomes literal. The guts are constructed from fabric scraps and tights, pulling together remnants that stand in for memory, history, and all the accumulated shit we carry. Nothing is clean or singular; it’s layered, stitched, and a little chaotic--like the way the past actually lives in the body.
The background gestures toward a therapist’s office, a space that holds a strange tension: it’s meant to be safe, but can also feel exposing enough to make you want to avoid it altogether. The speech bubbles push back against that hesitation. This imagery is a common illustration for the symbol of therapy showing what feels irrational, overwhelming, or “too much” can be detangle, understood, and make sense of these thoughts/feelings/memories for you.
The heart--sourced from an anatomy book and then painted over with oil paint--sits between clinical representation and emotional reality. It’s both diagram and feeling--something studied, but also something lived through.
Making this piece came out of recognizing that spilling your guts is rarely graceful. It’s awkward, vulnerable, sometimes embarrassing. But it’s also one of the few ways to actually work through what sits heavy in the body--what makes your stomach turn in the first place. The past doesn’t disappear, but it can be sorted, reframed, and healed.
