Love yourself a bit extra, and then some more.
The last four years has been a wild ride, one I could never have imagined coming, but that I am grateful for and will continue riding. Alas, a painful realization has brought me to this moment, -WATER YOURSELF-.
I have always been a giver — of time, of tenderness, of attention. In Water Yourself, I wanted to sit with the quiet accusation I sometimes make of myself: that I am better at nurturing others than I am at nurturing me. This reminds me of a post my brother always shares, that "Life will go on should you stumble and fall beyond recovery. Should you burn yourself to ashes to carr for others, life will go on once you're no more, so don't forget to take care of yourself".
The two figures in this piece are the same, they are me, drawn from my very on image, split across a single desert bloom. I stand and tend outward, watering-can in hand, raised upwards to pour out onto me, the very essence I've poured onto others — patient, generous, upright. This is the realization that I too deserve love and kindness. The other, me, is folded inward, low to the ground, cradling myself, flowers growing out my back as I begin to receive the pour of kindness and grace on me from my standing self. Nurturing what is growing in me. Neither is complete without the other.
I chose the desert as the setting because cacti know something about survival that feels true to this work — they hold water inside themselves, slowly, deliberately, so they can bloom even in scarcity. Self-love isn't indulgence. It's storage. It's the discipline of keeping something in reserve so there's anything left to give at all.
This piece is not a resolution. It's a mirror. It asks the same question I ask myself most days: Who waters you, when you are busy watering everyone else?
Water Yourself is an invitation — to pour inward before pouring out, and to remember that tending to yourself is not separate from love. It is where love begins.
This artwork was started in 2023, and ended in 2026.
Part of a larger body of work, UNTITLED.
