We Bloom Together by Natasha Stover
Medium: acrylic painting
Size: 12 in x 9 in
Artist statement: I tried to incorporate all three themes. The crying eye in the ground represents ‘Empathy’ as the seed, and it is being watered by things we are made to believe is our ‘Truth’. The black watering can represents sentencing judges, and the gray one represents corrections officers. We hear these things all the time, and even though they are meant to cut us down, we know our own truths and embrace them. That’s why the yellow roses growing from the seed have women in handcuffs holding each other in them. Regardless of anything else, anything we are told, we all stand together for one common goal, and that’s to go home one day. Yellow roses represent friendship, and the women within them show us incarcerated women holding each other up against the things we hear on a daily basis. The setting is on our track within our yard. Hopefully, one day, people’s eyes will open to the things that happen within our prison system, and they will stand together against it.
