The title of this series, Mwen Sévi Lwa, is inspired by the term used by Haitian voudou initiates. It roughly translates to "I serve the ancestral spirits". As a figure painter of Haitian ancestry, I use portraiture as a ritual act of conjuring, communing with, and venerating my ancestors; ancestors in the sense of my own family members who have passed away, as well as historical figures whose lives have made an impact on my creative and intellectual work.

These portraits are done in charcoal using a ‘reductive’ method where I start each portrait by coating the whole paper in charcoal powder, erasing away the areas in light, adding darker charcoal to the shadow areas, and largely leaving the powder untouched for the halftones.