"Parts of my grandfather's property did not belong to him but to other forces. These energies scrambled my innards and fused with my soul.

 

…The blackness lured me in.

 

The fear of the cellar was equally matched by feelings of ecstasy…The stale air that drifted out of the basement was permeated by smells of rum, sulphur, incense, dust, coconuts, sweets, and iron.

 

A party in silence.

 

A red glow emanated from wooden steps, pushing downward into this subterranean vessel. I recall someone being in there with me. What was this thing in the pitch black? A hand stroked my head with nails like pins. A whisper in my ear, as smooth and cutting as fresh razors, said.........

 

Welcome, Black. I am Red."

 

Diary entry, poem, "Welcome!¡" (March 2020).

 

My grandfather, a Jamaican shaman deeply rooted in Afro-Caribbean spiritual traditions encompassing Vodou, Obeah, and Santeria, held a profound influence over my existence. With his passing, I mutated. I became the vessel, Black, who cocoons and thus holds the supernatural and predatorial entity Red.........

 

I mine a personal and ancestral history via an exploration of the psyche and abstraction. Through this pursuit, the personal evolves into a political statement of resistance and endurance. I endeavour to exorcise the formless truth and world of Red (Red-Abyss). The journey that each drawing provides is a riddle for the viewer to disentangle and explore at their will. In these instances, what is found is not a formulaic rationale. The experience should be that of an open mouth with a throat into a bottomless pit—a place where the voices never end, night never sleeps, and conclusions never meet but only evolve.

 

At the heart of the work is a reasoning with western perceptions of psychosis and folkloric beliefs in the demonic.

 

The demonic exists without language because words are without essence—words are only containers alluding to the truths they seek to replace. We (Black and Red) are in pursuit of a sensation that can break the membrane, to move an image beyond its state of illusion and into possession (to hold a presence more than itself).