I see beauty in many things regardless of age, race, orientation or gender. There’s so much to admire in androgyny, and I like to use that in my pencil portraits. This one tells about the strength of a cancer patient undergoing treatment.

What the body must go through to be exorcised of the cancer is unimaginable to me; the physical changes, the emotional state, the mental exhaustion. The patience.

She’s a Christ-like figure, with bleeding heart and bearing the stigmata as signs of her suffering, near death and then rising again.