Major content warnings for sexual assault, suicidal ideation and attempts, self-harm, etcetc. Some captions will be more subtle and others will not. I will mark each one accordingly.
This page is dedicated to archiving my art and my life story. Some are with new owners, others have been lost to time and a digital file is all I have left of it. I still have access to many of them and are available for purchase. They will be captioned accordingly. In case you have any questions about anything my email is artbyjosette@gmail.com! In chronological order- top of page is newest, bottom is oldest. Not all will have something to say.
More to come :p
acrylic and lead on canvas - c.2024 - unavailable
During a period of adjusting to domesticity, following five long years of being heartbroken and disappointed on repeat. At the hand of others or myself, I was always waiting for the pin to drop. For abusers to pop-up at my haunt. For my home to crumble. For my job to dry up. For friends to leave. But now, with the help of a very patient man, there's calmness. No longer in the eye of the storm, it's finally over. Trauma doesn't ever leave your body, but with time and love it can get easier to observe it. It usually comes in the mornings, when I look at the woods that surround my home and think of the dominoes of my life. It doesn't really sting anymore.
ink on paper - c.2024 - available
ink on paper - c.2024 - unavailable
ink on paper - c.2024 - available
acrylic on canvas - c.2024 - available
Your savior drowns in piss along with the western values of self-idolatry and self-righteousness. You pray for peace in troubled times and, yet, you sit idle when faced with a decision. You are not exempt from the eternal global damnation just because you had a little more of a certain material extracted and depleted from the deep and repeated verses a little louder. Your god does not hear you. Your god is a lie. You are lying to yourself. You have been lied to. You make a mockery of Christ. You are a hypocrite.
acrylic on canvas - c.2024 -unavailable - slight content warning
Each home I've lived in since leaving my childhood home had one thing in common. There was always a streetlight peaking through the trees. I would sit out on the steps to my first solo apartment and look at it for hours. There was nothing good coming from me, my life was wasting away in that lonely two-bed one-bath. I didn't want to be who I needed to be, I didn't want anything good to whisk me away from my misery. But the streetlight always made me feel better. It made me listen to the noise of that city. It made me promise to be patient, and I was. Now, in this tiny home, I catch this streetlight winking at me when I peer into the woods.
acrylic on canvas - c.2024 - unavailable
Before you knew what was going on, I was studying your eyes. I analyzed how they flickered when we smoked cigarettes outside of the old spot. You were unaware, but I knew by the string lights we were fated. Your soul opened up to me, as did mine to you, begging not to let the lights burn before we were able to get started. I have always known I was going to love you. For my knight in shining armor.
mixed media collage on canvas
It's been about a year and a half. It will not end even if NPR chooses to report false narratives and enforce the status quo. It breaks my heart over and over. And there's still people who won't even acknowledge the inhumanity.
mixed media on canvas - c.2023 - unavailable - content warning
There was something so romantic about ideation at one point in my life. To know that the true depths of my soul didn't match how most people viewed my physical form. I was a collection of aesthetics and stereotypes so many would pick and choose from on whims. I was never allowed to bloom, or rather, I never allowed myself to bloom. No one would nurture the petals with delicacy and grace. But you do. I always knew you had the gift of understanding me in a way no one else came close to. Even in the darkest moments I found myself living, I knew the next time we met would keep me fertilized until spring.
acrylic and lead on canvas - c.2023 - available
acrylic on canvas - c.2023 - unavailable
mixed media on canvas - c.2023 - unavailable
When I was 19, I felt an undefinable connection and renewed closeness with my mother. I didn't see her much through the year. She got my married that summer. I was the maid of honor. I was inconsolable. I was so proud of her for everything she accomplished after decades of struggles. It felt like sometimes I was reliving her mistakes, and learning the lessons quicker. For some reason, there was a psychic link between me and her 29 years ago. I would feel it in my gut, heart, uterus, and bones. Generations of it. It was like she was speaking to me from the past when we're just a phone call away. And it felt like I was also communing with a descendant 29 years in the future. Telling her to never settle and honor her matrons. I hope my mom felt that way, too. That she was learning from her mother and teaching her daughter. Maybe I just have a slight dissociative disorder, or maybe I was just 19.
mixed media on canvas - c.2023 - unavailable - huge content warning for sexual assault
Right after I turned 17, or maybe before, something terrible happened to me under moonlight in the park my grandpa would take me to as a kid. I hate the man that stole those memories from me. It was right before Florida's "quarantine." What an awful year. He wasn't really a man. There was something blasphemous hiding beneath his unbrushed tongue and black, dead eyes. I never told my mom what happened. The words felt weird and clunky coming out of my mouth. I was ashamed that it happened to me. He still brags about it. I still feel sick at the thought of it. I'm shaking while typing this actually. I lost something that day. The last remaining spark of my fire. It's come back now, since then, but it's not the same. I wonder what kind of person I'd be if I never smoked his weed or what would've put the flames out instead.
mixed media on canvas - c.2022 - available and on view at lostworld bookstore in ft myers - slight content warning for natural disaster
The culmination of my 2022. I wasn't as ready as I thought I was. Moving away on a whim and moving back just as quick. Debt. Betrayal on Valentine's day. The start of the downturn of America, and my dwindling hope for the future. A year of spontaneity, recklessness, and big emotions. That was when Hurricane Ian took landfall on my town. I stayed at home. I watched the men in my family run around and play in the wind from the living room. Alone. I was going to die. The wind played tag with my father and brother. They were being pushed around by invisible bullies on the lawn. I was alone in our dark home. It was wailing. I would die alone, I thought, and there was nothing to be said of my life besides "wasn't that Ben's girl?". The eye came and it went. I actually prayed that day, all day. God, did it move so slow. I have more to say about this one. It's complicated, but I will wait until another day.
mixed media on canvas - c.2021 - available - content warning for religious trauma
Coming of age around blasphemers that cannibalize their Lord every Wednesday night and Sunday morning was bound to have caused some rift between the Holy Spirit and I. I respect and live by the philosophies taught by Jesus, but I am not a practitioner. There's an evil that prays in His pews. Self-proclaimed big, strong men that make innocent girls cry. His lord came unto him and told him I was of the Devil- a temptress, a snake, the ultimate evil. I was Lilith and I was Eve. "My Son! Thou art holy. Punish her. She is no saint! She's a witch and a whore! Bring her to firey retribution!" So he did. But I was innocent! I was a saint! He turned me this way! I was pure before he came into me life. He was the snake. Oh Lord! Why didn't you love me as much? I took good care of your garden.
watercolor and ink on watercolor paper - c.2020 - unavailable
The walls were a muted yellow like the old mattress of a bedwetter. Mold spots were growing on the ceiling tiles. A dead man's face watches you clock in and clock out. Every 14 hours. On repeat. You lose time with your family, miss important events, ignore your body, and deny any rot done to your soul. Mr. Jenkins would be disappointed if you left early. You almost collapsed while leveling half the store but you'll be fine once you drink some Gatorade®. You spend each holiday blank staring the register screen and making empty conversation with people who hate their lives more than you for some reason. Most of your coworkers disinterest you and disappoint you with desires limited to lengthy upward movment within the company. Two will go on to your most trusted advisors. But for now you'll sit on that crumbling bench and stare at the wall. It's all so pale. It's so depressing. It's cold. It reminds you of Christmas.
acrylic on canvas - c.2020 - available
Do you ever get to a point where you can see the potential outcomes for decisions you make? Not in any logical way, but you can feel the pain or joy of a version of you that's yet to be born. You can feel what's not meant to be yours. Your body rejects choices for you. You slept in for that job interview. You got into a car accident on the way to meet a stranger you met once months ago. It's the little (and big) things the universe does to get your attention. The warnings of a drunk psychic. She told you to stop. You already know this isn't your destiny, stop forcing it.
charcoal on paper - c.2018/2019/2020 (i forgot) - unavailable - content warning for alcholism
There's nothing better to do in this town. So, you start hanging out with that one classmate from highschool. It was fun, at first, romanticizing underage drinking. But, after awhile, it starts feeling more so like your waterboarding the already buried memories. Just two pals glorifing bad habits. Being sober was hard. You rush your day so you could drink their parents' liquor. At least it was in good company.
acrylic and watercolor on watercolor paper - c.2018 - unavailable
acrylic on canvas - c.2018 - available - slight content warning for depersonalization
Looking in the mirror is always surreal. I've never really recognized the person glaring back. It was worse when I was younger. Features fell flat, limbs felt heavy. I wasn't tangible. I was more similar to the lack of wind, going by unnoticed and unremarkable.