Who I am

I make art when I don’t know where else to put something.

I started because I was tired of choking on the things that I never said.
Some emotions don’t dissolve with time.
Some identities don’t fit the version of you that people are comfortable with.
Some silence becomes too loud to carry.

So I gave it shape.

I’ve always been drawn to myth — not as escape, but as architecture.
Dragons. Sigils. Archetypes.
Symbols that feel older than language itself.

But the work isn’t fantasy.

It’s confrontation.

It’s about identity — who we are beneath performance.
It’s about power — the kind that doesn’t announce itself.
It’s about restraint — the tension of holding yourself together.
And what happens when that control slips.

I use symmetry because structure makes the intensity deliberate.
I use bold lines because hesitation feels dishonest.
I use limited palettes because clarity lives in contrast.

I don’t soften what I mean.

A lot of my work explores feminine intensity — not softness, not spectacle, but presence.
Eyes that stare back.
Faces that refuse explanation.
Bodies that transform instead of collapse.

When text appears, it isn’t decoration.
It’s an interruption.
The thought that slipped through.
The truth that refuses to stay quiet.

Spade Dragon Studio is the language I built when I didn’t feel fluent in anything else. Each piece adds to a mythology that feels less invented and more uncovered — an archive of becoming.

I don’t make art just to decorate a wall.
I make art to confront something.

If you see yourself in it, just know, that’s not on accident.

-Erin Gabriel