Totem: The Three Faces of Power

Read it from the bottom and you begin with the spirit: a red ceremonial face, all hollow eyes and open mouth, cradled in the tattooed palm of a hand that has already made its decision. Move upward and you find the woman — dark as the space between stars, eyes gold and glowing, teal fangs bared not in menace but in truth-telling, gold teardrops trailing down her chin like liquefied knowledge. Her earrings are discs of hammered sun.

At the crown: the skull. Framed in afro-puff clouds, bound with red rope, its yellow eyes burning with everything death knows that the living have not yet learned. The crossbones beneath it are not a warning label. They are a coat of arms.

This vertical totem is a cosmology compressed into one column: spirit at the root, woman in the middle, mortality at the crown — and all three in agreement. The teal field behind it hums with the particular energy of things that exist between worlds. This is not a painting about death. It is a painting about what persists.