The Origin Story of Brave Girl
“The old door whined as she walked into the quiet antique shop in Old Town Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was dim, musty and smelled of Palo Santo. The place was filled with New Mexican, Mexican, and South American art. A familiar and far away feeling tickled the back of her neck as she browsed through the colorful and macabre religious imagery stacked all around her. As her eyes began to adjust, she followed a few steps up into a second room and that is when she saw her…La Dolorosa, Our Lady of Sorrows. The effect was immediate, unable to contain a rush of surprising emotions, she gasped out loud and began weeping. The old shopkeeper appeared out of the shadows. Unmoved by her reaction, he told her that the painting was quite old, of mysterious origins, most likely from a church somewhere in Mexico, and that it had possibly been cut and stolen from a larger painting. She looked at the tortured face of Mary mourning her dead son… tear-stained, blood-shot eyes, green-hued skin, heart impaled with nine knives, and what she saw reflected was her own inner pain and the generational trauma of her culture and family.
She had to have this painting.
Later, a world-class artist duo from Amsterdam known as Pipsqueak Was Here! came to visit her at her home on Maui, Hawaii. They were curious about the gloomy, vampiric image of La Dolorosa that hung on her living room wall.
One morning, shortly after their visit, She woke up from a nightmare and instinctively knew that she needed to burn the painting. She told her boyfriend, he agreed without hesitation, he was never comfortable with the painting. He said he knew the perfect place to do it. They waited until the moon was full, then drove his Jeep along the Na Pali coast to a steep and rutted dirt road that led to a small cove. It was a very calm night with no wind and a gentle ocean. The brightness of the full moon created the surreal effect of a colorless daytime. They were alone. He started a fire in the fire pit, then sat back against the base of a Lauhala tree and strummed his guitar while she reflected on what she was releasing to the flames. When she placed the canvas into the flames it didn’t catch right away. She waited. An air of defiance hung heavily until… Finally, a yellow spear of flame curved up and around the old hand-carved frame. Once the frame was burning, then the edges of the canvas began to burn too. The flame cut a circle that eventually closed in around her face, one eye defiantly stared back. Even as ash, the ghost eye was still visible as it clung to a rock on the edge of the fire pit. She wiped away the last of her cathartic tears as stared for a long time into the fire. When she felt confident that La Dolorosa was truly gone, she stood up, he joined her and they walked towards the shoreline, took off their clothes and waded into the warm water as the brilliant full moon light reflected like diamonds across the inky black ocean.
She wrote a story about this experience and sent it to her artist friends in Amsterdam. A month or so later, they sent her a painting that was their version of the transformed La Dolorosa. She is comic book inspired, small, nude and painfully vulnerable yet fiercely focused as she faces the battle before her. Her hands in prayer with 9 knives piercing her heart. A bird in flight over her head. She is battle scarred but not broken, she’s a survivor and a warrior. She is divinely guided and protected.
Her name is Brave Girl.”