“Pleasure and Pain” foregrounds a female figure surrounded by three ethereal beings, two of which she protectively encircles with her arms. The flames, rendered in dense blacks and vibrant wisps of color, engulf the central character. They represent the power of change, positive transformation, and self-assurance. In Pierre’s work, she builds her own realms by challenging traditional art historical tropes. Flames, serpents, and otherworldly seraphs come to represent endurance, female empowerment, and tenderness. A dense mass of bodies soaring upwards in a flattened space recalls the forced perspective of Renaissance altarpieces, which tell stories of sublimation, mercy, and resurrection. Pierre reconfigures these formal systems from the past to generate new possible futures, grounded in the here and now.