Amanda Gough

This self-portrait captures the layered emotional and physical reality of navigating life as a single mother in Baltimore while managing both visible and invisible disabilities. Rendered in shades of deep indigo and muted blue, the figure appears partially dissolved into her environment—an echo of how trauma and responsibility can blur the sense of self. The seated posture, with crossed legs and downturned toes, conveys both vulnerability and endurance. Her form is partially obscured, her head dissolving into a dark, stormlike cloud—a symbolic expression of PTSD’s heavy mental fog. The ink bleeds and washes speak to the fluidity of emotion, the instability of routine, and the constant shift between resilience and collapse. The right side of the image, dominated by a loosely defined table or bench, hints at domestic life and caregiving—yet it’s only half-present, almost fading. This visual instability mirrors the artist’s constant balancing act: sustaining a home, managing pain, surviving trauma, and raising a child with limited support. Though fragmented and heavy, the portrait is not without strength. Each brushstroke resists erasure, asserting presence even in dissolution. It is a meditation on persistence amid change, a raw testament to the cost of survival, and a quiet call for compassion for the unseen labor carried by many women like her.

In this surrealist self-portrait, the artist confronts the fragmented psyche of a woman living with PTSD and the lasting echoes of sexual trauma. The composition is scattered yet connected by thread-like tendrils, symbolizing the tenuous bonds between moments, lovers, memories, and wounds that have yet to fully scar over.