A BRAVE woman has learnt to love her differences by creating artwork with her skin<br /> condition - after years of bullying. Ash Soto, 24, from Florida, stopped going swimming<br /> after a group of children asked if she had “showered in bleach” at a pool party. She has<br /> vitiligo, a condition where skin loses pigmentation, going white in patches and growing<br /> over time. Ash started noticing her skin changing at the age of 12, when a small white<br /> spot appeared on her neck. She told Barcroft TV: “The spots on my elbows and my arms<br /> started getting bigger, I felt very helpless.” She found going to school difficult as other<br /> children would comment on her skin, often with cruel remarks. Ash said that she lost her<br /> sense of identity, “I was a shell of the person that I used to be”. But one day she plucked<br /> up the courage to show her vitiligo on Instagram, which she sees as her “turning point”.<br /> Ash explained that, “other people started writing to me to say that they also had this skin<br /> condition, we started relating stories and I'm like, ‘my God, I'm not alone’”. After this<br /> breakthrough Ash started tracing the lines of her vitiligo and creating artwork out of the<br /> skin she used to hate. Her design influences have included Van Gogh’s The Starry Night,<br /> Pokémon and Dragon Ball Z.
