This painting comes from a place of both intimacy and critique. The woman blow-dries her hair—an ordinary act made uncanny as the hair dryer takes on the shape of a gun. It’s a moment I’ve lived and watched countless times: beauty routines loaded with expectation, repetition, and pressure. “Loaded Ritual” is about that tension—the quiet force of conformity, the small acts of resistance, and the complicated power women carry in simply getting ready for the world. It’s familiar, uncomfortable, and entirely human.