Why I create forbidden art
What if your doubt wasn’t a warning, but a turning point?
An artist’s journey to rediscover rebellion, truth, and the freedom of the female form.
Let’s be honest:
My work is not for everyone.
And perhaps it never was.
The female form has always challenged people.
Sometimes revered, sometimes feared —
sometimes quietly erased.
There’s a timeless tension there.
And that tension… lives in my work.
What I paint — the female body in all its strength and sensuality —
isn’t offensive. It’s natural.
Yet time and again, it’s treated as taboo.
Not just in history books — but now, here, again.
Especially online.
Instagram hides it.
Algorithms flag it.
People avoid it.
As if looking is shameful.
As if truth needs to be covered.
And it got to me.
Not because I want to please the masses — I don’t.
But because I started asking myself the real questions:
What is my relationship to this body I keep painting?
Do I still choose this subject — with full awareness of the resistance it triggers?
Or is it time to soften my language, change my style, mask the body in abstraction?
Because let’s be clear:
This is not the easiest path.
It’s far simpler to paint what people want to hang above their couch.
Far more lucrative to chase trends, flatter tastes, filter out the raw edges.
But I didn’t come to art to flatter.
I came to uncover.
And yet…
the doubts began to grow.
As the pressure mounted, I felt the weight of the questions:
Do I need to change?
Or do I dare to continue?
That’s when I applied for Quarantine — a radical artist retreat on a real quarantine island in the Mediterranean, invented by Carles Gomilla.
No phones.
No distractions.
Just 60 artists, 6 mentors, including the incredible Edward Povey, whose honest and vulnerable guidance set in motion a transformation in me,
and 12 hours a day devoted not to the how, but the why.
And that changed everything.
Because when the noise fell away, so did the doubts.
Under the Mediterranean sky — stripped of devices, likes, expectations —
I remembered who I was before I started asking for permission.
Not a stylist.
Not a content creator.
But an artist.
An alchemist.
Someone who transforms material into presence —
and the body into truth.
There, surrounded by others searching just as deeply,
I realised something essential:
I don’t need to change my work.
I need to stand by it — more than ever.
Because what I paint is not provocation.
It’s freedom.
Not the freedom of rebellion for rebellion’s sake —
but the kind that says:
You are allowed to exist fully.
Unmasked. Unfiltered. Unashamed.
And if that still scares people?
So be it.
The world doesn’t need more art that pleases.
It needs more art that frees.
If you’ve ever felt pressure to tone yourself down,
to edit your truth just enough to be tolerated —
this story is for you.
Because sometimes, the bravest thing you can do
is stay exactly as you are.
And continue anyway.
