Synkroniciti is delighted to welcome back visual artist and writer Denise Bossarte of Houston with Perfectionist, a digital collage created through the SoulCollage® practice. SoulCollage® invites participants to build personal decks of cards infused with archetypal resonance, intimate constellations of image and intuition. Collage has long been a potent medium for accessing our inner language, a voice that converses with the world yet remains distinctly our own. This image is a personal warning about the seductive dangers of perfectionism.
Denise writes:
“It is a reminder of how much I can push myself to meet the expectations of doing things perfectly, to the extreme that I become an automaton enslaved to an unreachable ideal… My work is to shift my expectations to strive for excellence rather than perfection and to be comfortable just doing my best.”
The card itself is gorgeous — beautifully layered and quietly arresting. A gleaming robot, with a detachable face and a glowing heart chakra, sits lost in thought. Behind her rises a lattice of metal, an oil derrick or perhaps a power‑line support, forming a mechanical web that frames her figure. Beyond that, a stone‑patterned texture anchors the composition. These backgrounds feel like mind and body, two realms where pattern can become prison, fixing us in place when we lose sight of our humanity.
In Perfectionist, Denise has assembled a deeply personal symbol that is also universal. It speaks to anyone who has felt the tightening grip of impossible standards, offering a reminder that compassion, fallibility, and the freedom to simply do one’s best are essential to a life well‑lived.
View Perfectionist in Synkroniciti’s Expectations issue, Vol. 8, No. 2, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Denise Bossarte is an award-winning author, poet, photographer, and visual artist whose passion is inspiring others. Her photography is in the Buddhist Contemplative Photography tradition, Miksang. She has been a practitioner of Miksang photography for 15 years and a Miksang teacher for over 12 years. She enjoys writing, exploring new art forms, and teaching contemplative photography workshops. She lives in Texas with her husband and literary cat, Za’ Ji.