I am a writer, published poet, and teacher of literature at St. Albans School in Washington, D.C. With nothing but the desire or inspiration, I began drawing, trusting both the feeling and these words about His Holiness Baha’u’llah: that an energy had been released with His coming, as the Báb wrote,

“‘Should a tiny ant desire, in this day, to be possessed of such power as to be able to unravel the abstrusest and most bewildering passages of the Qur’án, its wish will no doubt be fulfilled, inasmuch as the mystery of eternal might vibrates within the innermost being of all created things.’ If so helpless a creature can be endowed with so subtle a capacity, how much more efficacious must be the power released through the liberal effusions of the grace of Bahá’u’lláh!”

I begin with four letters—Bahá—which means “Glory,” and then I allow the paint or pen to move across paper or canvas in whichever way I felt encouraged to move. Each new painting represents a beginning—something to find, search out, or discover, and eventually, I find forms—geographies, faces, and everywhere, birds—all emerge from these four letters.

Mine is a conversation with paper, and drawing—or specifically— the line— becomes my focus.

These pieces comprise my reflection on the African-American experience in both the colors of Africa and of Haiti’s national flag. Since this is a time of transformation for African Americans, a time of renewal, for seeing the world anew and offering perspectives for new beginnings, a butterfly appears in two of the pieces, and colors of Africa and Haiti, which I see as colors of transformation and promise; this drawing also began with Bahá.