The Screaming Butterfly is a profoundly personal work, but it also speaks to a broader, often misunderstood, human experience. It serves as a visual metaphor for my journey with late-diagnosed Asperger's Syndrome.

The painting's central theme revolves around a profound paradox: the stark contrast between what is presented on the outside and what is experienced on the inside. For a large part of my life, I navigated the world by wearing a "social mask"—a carefully constructed persona designed to appear composed and functional. The butterfly, a universal symbol of metamorphosis and beauty, represents this outward appearance. Its delicate wings, rendered with vibrant, almost ethereal colours, embody the way I felt I was expected to move through the world, seemingly untouched by chaos.

But beneath that exterior was a constant, intense inner turmoil. This is where the "scream" comes in. The figure's contorted, pained face gives form to that silent, raw terror. It's not a scream of anger, but one of exhaustion and overwhelming sensory and social anxiety. The painting's fragmented, mosaic-like style—where colours don't blend but instead exist as distinct, separate patches—is a deliberate artistic choice to reflect this internal state. It's a visual representation of a mind experiencing cacophony—a flood of unblended, intense sensory information that doesn't easily fit together.

The moment of diagnosis, for me, was like discovering the source of that scream. The painting captures that profound moment of realization. The beauty of the butterfly remains, but it's now understood in the context of the underlying struggle. The diagnosis didn't change me, but it did change how I understood myself and the world around me. The world, once a confusing but seemingly benign garden, suddenly revealed its predators—misunderstanding and exploitation. This artwork is my way of giving that scream a voice, of making an invisible struggle visible.

In "The Screaming Butterfly," I aim to convey that transformation is not always graceful or beautiful. It can be agonizing. The piece is a testament to the pain of an unacknowledged struggle and a powerful piece of advocacy for the understanding of neurodiversity.