‘Earth Mother’ is where it all began… The poinciane tree in my yard is like a muse for me and I was there, drawing, when I noticed the woman’s form in the trunk so the trunk became a women.  She is green because brown or grey would have been too obvious and not as interesting,” he explained.

“The tree was bare, without leaves so I painted her with a headdress that suggests junkanoo.  The pigeon in there because that’s the bird that’s usually in the yard.  The black stocking was used because it contrasts with the green and breaks the colour plain at the point.  The stocking also suggests eroticism.”

Similarly the painting “Dreams of Passion” (Jungle Fire) is another work of the imagination that like “Earth Mother”, took a great deal of time.  The work demonstrates what is possible when the artist frees himself from the habit-forming demands of a particular genre.  “The main elements of the painting are the head of a women and that of a man.  She is white and Egyptian-like.  He is a black man.  Her headdress started out as a flamingo then it became a fish.  You never really know how a work will turn out once it’s started.  Over here I use grey and white as a background and this is something new for me.  The eroticism is there in the associations.”