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“Choose Your Bruises” is about a simple reality: we cannot avoid every trade-off, setback or uncomfortable decision. But we can choose which ones are worth it. Look closely and you’ll find a small plaster marked “stubborn” and “idealistic.” Traits that can earn us the occasional bruise, but also help us stay the course when something genuinely matters.

The character remains upright, open and somehow still smiling — although in slightly wobbly lines. A small homage to resilience, humour and the willingness to look a little foolish while learning something new. The blue eye, a recurring motif throughout the series, references the German expression “mit einem blauen Auge davonkommen”: making it through a difficult situation, perhaps with a lesson or two. The dark contrast is deliberately essential to the painting — much like setbacks often become part of what shapes us.

At its centre sits a small heart, intentionally contrasting with the harder word bruises. It represents the compass underneath our choices: knowing what matters, acting with good intent and having the courage to follow through. The recurring blue and white explore the same duality: challenge and possibility, darkness and light, conviction and balance. As a Libra, balance is perhaps inevitably a recurring theme in my work — not as perfect harmony, but as the judgement to know when to adapt and when to stand firm.

And then there is the morning light. When sharp rays of sunlight meet its surface, the layers and contrasts come alive, giving a painting about bruises an unexpectedly hopeful sense of new beginnings and moving forward.