I will not attempt to tell you what these paintings are “all about”, as the best pieces of the work came through me and not from me.  I invite you into the conversation, eager to learn from what you discover, and offer some ingredients of the imagery as a start to the dialog...

This image was ultimately paired with an answering panel: “Government 2”, which attempts to visualize hope and restoration into the brokenness.

Here are three stages of the painting from summer 2010, winter 2012, and summer 2013.

I tried to imagine what the spiritual overthrow of evil “powers, authorities, and principalities” would look like in the heavenly realms.  [Ephesians chapter 6]

I feel like I am often praying in imagery rather than words- that the Lord gives me an image and I get to shape and work with it, or that I offer an image and the Lord gives it back to me “updated”.  This co-laboring is a regular experience of my studio time, and some of the greatest highlights in the process are when I realize (usually when someone else points it out) a deeper meaning to the work than I was conscious of or intentionally imposing.  I’m left chuckling to myself and painfully aware that God is keeping me humble, letting me know He’s with me, and freeing me from the tendency and desire to take credit.  The visual pairing of the serpents in these two panels was one such example.  It was only after I felt the Lord give me a vision of the raised medical staff in the hand of the girl that I saw the appropriate pairing of imagery: the “Serpent” of evil and corruption crushed in the first panel, and the medical serpent of healing- held by Moses and referred to by Christ Jesus as a metaphor of himself, held aloft in the second.

The final element to be placed on the image was the iconic Haitian symbol of the “Freed Slave” blowing a conch shell, sword in hand and broken shackles on his left ankle.  This figure was the final sphere champion for my last painting in the series, “Media,” and it seemed fitting to tie the beginning and end of my project together in a continuous loop by echoing the figure again here.  More than that, the figure actually comes from a statue that sits in front of this very capital building, and had been there even when I painted the watercolor of 2010, though I couldn’t see it buried in the tent city of the displaced earthquake victims.

It is hard to appreciate the often invisible value of the rule of law, until you are suddenly and dangerously aware that you have come to a land where there is none.