Portrait of Willie Suttle

2019 (Study for painting)
Graphite pencil, ink, and Prismacolor Pencil
on Strathmore Paper
12×9 inches

I discovered the story of Willie Suttle through my interest in true crime documentaries and was fascinated by the idea of a person transforming into something beyond his story in the mortal world. In 1997, the left hand of Willie Suttle was found on the bank of the Manatee River. Manatee County authorities found in their investigations that this was the hand of a deceased person, identified by his fingerprints. When his body was exhumed and a necropsy performed, his abdominal cavity was found to contain numerous Voodoo dolls dedicated to competitors of the funeral home that handled his internment.

The painting is a portrait of his necropsy, with the dolls emerging from his body. The writing on the dolls are crows, the messengers between the physical world and the afterlife. His left hand is missing, most likely to have been used as a “hand of glory,” a very powerful tool in the occult. The overlying symbology is the vèvè of Damballah, the overarching great serpent life force of Voodoo. In the painting’s background are wings of fire, as Willie Suttle rises like a phoenix, reborn as mythos.