The Crossroads

(Self-portrait), 2019
Acrylic on Canvas
24×24 inches

“The Crossroads” was painted in a very dark period of my life, during my high-conflict divorce from a 22-year abusive marriage and entering a period of defending myself from persecution by frivolous lawsuits. I felt myself to be at a crossroads of change and reinvention of myself, determined although stressed to my psychological limits. It is a portrait of what was happening in my head at this time.

My head is consumed with fire, symbolizing the stress and urgency of my situation. The fire also represents the burning away of my old self and metamorphosis into something new. The line drawing overlying the painting image is the vèvè of Elegua, the Voodoo spirit god whose duty is to control the passage between the physical and spiritual worlds. In African Voodoo tradition, the vèvè is inscribed to enable the practitioner to communicate with the spirit to whom it belongs. Elegua, as the gatekeeper to the spiritual world, must always be summoned first for one to summon any other spirit.
My personal connection to Voodoo, and other primitive religion, lies in the separation of aspects of life into separate godhoods, as a means of explaining human reality. I also spent portions of my life growing up in Montgomery, Alabama, where I had some
exposure to Voodoo and Folk Catholicism through explorations in local folk religion. In the painting’s background, a crow flies up. The crow is the messenger between the physical world and the afterlife in Western culture. The connection between these worlds is expressive of the rebirth of myself.