In the wake of two significant family deaths, this body of work began to take shape. Grieving and talking about how these events are affecting one another is something we never do in my family. In the same breath, a course on Death and Bereavement opening up another perspective on relationships with death and an understanding of death-related practices has influenced my desire to translate the stages of grief visually, the feelings associated with grief, and death-related rituals and practices. Titled “Rituals for the Living” these works incorporate two sections—paintings, and photography—all set in this dream world I created called DreamVille, which originated from a dream I had back in 2021. In which, newly dead family members visited me at our family home in Barbados, and a significant thing about them was that their faces weren’t distinguishable. Once awakening from this dream, I wasn’t able to come up with a clear explanation or understanding of it, so I painted everything I could remember and the creation of these figures became an attachment and a signature at once.

During “Rituals for the Living” I have decided to be very intentional with the colors I have used, so much so that for each stage of grief I am touching upon, there is a color associated with it. Denial is represented by the colors purple and magenta with accents of gray because purple is a color of mourning. Anger is red and orange because anger is not always raging, but it is always hot, bright, and simmering. Bargaining is yellow gold and green as it is the act of trying to give up or exchange something of value for something priceless. Depression is represented as blue, gray with dark purple accents and the colors here repeat because depression and denial are very similar in their manifestations. Acceptance is a pale or pastel yellow and white associated with death’s growth, natural purity, and the ability to move on.

Outside of wanting to develop my dreamworld further, I used it as a tool to not to be so literal with the concept of death and the stages of grief, which in turn has opened up my palette to be more flexible, adventurous, and whimsical not only in color but in style and composition.