Beautiful Illusions studio

08/25/2026

Rooted in wisdom 🐝
Wooden Circle, acrylic paint
For the Vermont Creative Works
art auction fundraiser!!
The sunflower stands for roots and growth. It stays grounded, always turning toward light even in darkness. Its growth is slow, deliberate, and earthbound.
🎨🖌️
The owl represents wisdom that isn’t learned all at once, but gathered through a lifetime of experience. It is watchful and still — the kind of wisdom that comes from sitting in the dark and learning how to see.
🌻🦉
The piece argues that wisdom and being grounded are not separate. We need roots to draw from before we can earn our wings. Growth happens in the dark. Wisdom is what we do with the light we find there.🦊🌿💕🐻
By Stephanie Garguilo
Beautiful Illusions studio

08/20/2026

Not your muse
16x20
Acrylic on canvas
Don’t lay love at the altar of my skin.
Skin is paper.
It creases. It thins.
It forgets the sun it used to worship.
Everything with physical beauty fades and wilts with time,
and I am not here to be kept in glass.

Love me for my mind,
the wolves that run in it after midnight.
Love me for my heart,
how it eats grief and grows antlers from the bone.
Love me for my body,
not its shape, but its shadow.
The way it knows how to be still and how to run.
Love me for my soul,
a cave mouth. A cold fire. A thing that howls back.

Love me for the things I make you see
when your eyes adjust to dark.
Love me for the things I make you feel
like frost on a hunt. Like quiet, after.
Love me for what my essence represents:
a wild thing that stopped apologizing for teeth.

She’s not asking to be called beautiful.
She’s redefining it by refusing to face you.
The most powerful kind of beautiful is the kind you keep for yourself first.
So don’t love the flower.
Love the forest.
Love the rot, the root, the reach.
Love the hands that buried the rose
and walked away without looking back.
Poem and painting by Stephanie Garguilo for sale at
Beautiful Illusions studio

08/17/2026

08/17/2026

Sorry, I'm in my flower era🩷

8x10 mixed media painting🌿

This is what happens when you stop pruning yourself to fit someone else’s garden.🍄
She’s turned inward. Head replaced with a rose because some days thinking hurts more than blooming. The yellow is loud on purpose. Joy isn’t quiet. Neither is grief. The pink behind her is messy because growing up doesn’t happen on clean paper.🌻
We were supposed to grow. That was the deal. Same pace, same direction. But you kept reaching for winter while I was chasing the sun. Now your version of me is wilted, and I’m over here, all petals and thorns, taking up space.
The dark lines are boundaries. The flat color is honesty. No blending, no softening the edges to make it easier for you to look at.
You’re not the same. Thank god I’m not either.🌿🦊
Beautiful Illusions studio