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THE ART
I’m Damara Woodring, The Portrait Priestess. I create art like a ritual—every moment of my life is sacred, every creation a reflection of something deeper. Art has always been my sanctuary, the place where I return to myself over and over again. Each self-portrait is a meditation, a quiet invitation to pause, breathe, and see yourself more clearly.
It’s an intuitive reading, a conversation between the image and the observer, stirring emotions, revealing truths, and offering space for reflection. Self-portraiture means so much to me because, as much as we move through the world, we rarely stop to truly connect with ourselves. And that says something about us—about how distant we can be from our own essence. Through my work, I want to close that distance, to offer a moment of stillness, a mirror to return home to yourself.
To bare my body in front of my own lens is to reclaim it. It is to stand before myself, unguarded, and remember that my skin, my curves, my flesh are not offerings for consumption but embodiments of a lineage that breathes through me. My body belongs to me. It has always belonged to me, yet the world has tried, time and time again, to convince me otherwise.
I create nude images because my body is my own language, an archive of stories passed through blood and bone. Within its curves, I carry the wisdom of my ancestors—their resilience, their joy, their survival. I feel them in the way my hips move, in the way my spine bends, in the weight of my breasts, in the softness of my belly. These are sacred spaces, evidence of all that has come before me, and all that will come after. To photograph myself without the interference of fabric or the weight of the world’s expectations is to return to something primal, something untouched by shame. The Old Ways. It is an act of remembrance, of honoring the flesh as both herstory and future.
But the world has a different story for a woman’s body. When it is wrapped and hidden, it is made "pure", acceptable, "respectable". When it is unveiled by choice—without permission, without serving a purpose beyond the woman herself—it becomes a threat. The same society that plasters naked bodies across billboards and magazine covers in service of capitalism recoils when a woman chooses to display her form on her own terms. When nudity is for male consumption, it is celebrated. When nudity is for self-worship, it is vilified.
I do not create these images to be desired, nor to be shamed. I create them because I exist, because my body does not need to be justified, because my skin is a canvas where my ancestors have written their names. I create them to show that a woman can be nude and belong only to herself.
This work is a rebellion, but more importantly, it is a homecoming. Each image is a prayer, a declaration, a refusal to disappear. My body is mine. It always has been. And through my art, it always will be.
Exhibitions
