Bruises, Battle Scars & Becoming: A Work of Sacred Rage
Title: Bruises, Battle Scars & Becoming. Medium: Acrylic paint and marker on canvas. Date: May/June 2025. Artist: Erin Rachel Wilson
As a multidisciplinary artist and intuitive practitioner, my work explores the intersections of embodiment, emotion, and creative healing. This work, titled Bruises, Battle Scars & Becoming, emerged at a time when I felt both furious and defeated—physically marked by surgery scars and bruises from multiple vascular procedures, and emotionally pushed to my limit.
Created just before a major angioplasty and six weeks after a first rib removal surgery for a rare condition called Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, it is an intuitive expression of sacred rage, surrender, and rebirth.
It began with an unusual choice for me: a black background. As the process unfolded, white began to seep into the corners. Whether the light is consuming the dark or the dark is reclaiming the light is subjective, and reflects the delicate dance of giving in to my anger and attempting to remain optimistic throughout my healing journey.
Frustrated by my failed attempt to capture my green and purple bruises realistically, I turned my brush around and began scratching the paint with the hard edge, leading to the instinctual addition of a carved heart, a symbol of self-compassion emerging from the pain and anguish. A pink peony grows from the chaos, representing the blossoming of my most authentic self through this process.
A bright red gash represents my surgical incision, but the blood becomes honey—a metamorphosis of pain into sweetness, suffering into creative life force. Sunlight and wildflowers burst upward, while golden-orange sacral energy flows downward like strong, revitalized veins. A bee approaches the honey, symbolizing hard-earned reward, and a moth flutters near the top, embodying shadow work and deep transformation.
This painting is unlike anything I’ve created before. Though only 8 inches square, this piece is potent, raw, and bursts with energy, tension, and renewal. It marks a pivotal moment in my own metamorphosis—from physical pain and emotional darkness into a reclamation of power.
In beautiful orchestration of divine timing, I submitted this piece to a local juried art exhibit with the theme of “Metamorphosis"—change, renewal, or transformation—the day after my final venogram, in which I received confirmation that my artery is open and flowing freely, and that the physical transformation required to bring closure to this health challenge is finally complete.
I’m proud of this work as a vivid representation of the fierce transformation that becomes possible when we allow ourselves to fully feel our pain and rage, and meet it with creative flow, giving it space to transmute into beauty in tangible form.