Serious question folks...

Honest question here folks (hey, my title promised you quandries, so here you go!):

I really like the motif I've been working up, theoretically for my Mom for her birthday (can you tell that plan might be changing?), and I feel that it needs some, well, dramatic tension to unpretty it a little. Well, ok, to *ugly* it a little...

The motif is very organic-under-the-microscope looking (a poor-womans-Bryer-Fallert), and I have this huge urge to throw sort of a railroad spike right through the middle. I'm not sure how much I would vary the hues in that zone (going from the dominant reds and oranges into sort of a extoplasmic/toxic green sort of appeals to me, in a sort of militant-environmentalist-gone-way-awry sort of way - very '90s), but the image of this spike itself is very compelling (and solves another design issue by neatly dividing converging figures in a dynamic way).

I'm thinking that my thinking about this is fueled by my own reproductive issues; I was thinking of the Remembering Mama challenge, and part of my piece looks like giant breasts, so I thought of the spike as my Mom's breast cancer surgery, and then I thought of it more as the problems that I am having getting pregnant - the spiking of trees used to happen so folks couldn't harvest the trees, just like I seem to be unable (sor far!) to harvest the fruit of my body... My feelings of fear and doubt aren't really toxic to me, but they *are* very present and noticable in my psyche. I'm thinking of railroad-metal-grey for the spike.

So the big question is this: do I leave the spike out, solve my design issue in another way, keep my motif whole, and keep my personal issues out of it, OR, do I put the spike in, write an artist statement explaining my thoughts here, and potentially take the 'pretty' out of the piece? Doing the latter might also violate one of my personal philosophies for living as well; namely 'Take yourself just seriously enough, and no more seriously than needful.'

I'm all for expressing the human experience in Art, but usually feel a bit more-esoteric-than-thou when I go there personally, and I don't really *like* that version of myself very much... especially out in public! (You can't take me *anywhere*!)

Anyway, I'd really appreciate your feedback on this, for while I *do* actually enjoy the tension this is injecting into my process, I'd really kind of like to get into the *fabric*! Thanks in advance!