I painted this when I was 16, at a time when I was unsure where I was headed. My schooling was nearly finished and I didn’t have any direction to what I was going to do afterwards.  My home life was also unpredictable as my parents’ marriage was starting to disintegrate and I was still very much dependant on them.

This was one of many paintings I did of the time that expressed my anxiety of an unknown future.  I painted hallways of multiple closed doors, or ladders leading to ‘something’, all with the question of what should I do or what direction should I choose when I don’t know where these choices will lead.

This painting of a stairway leading to a door was the only painting of that time that survived.  When I became a Christian at the age of 18, I started going through my paintings and having a renewed look at them.  At the time I felt the need to purge myself from my previous dark and despondent paintings so I burned them.  However, when I came to this painting I stopped.  I had named the painting ‘Destiny’ and when I looked at the door, I could see a cross which I hadn’t planned when I painted it, and didn’t see it until that moment.  Also, the only bright colour on the painting was on the door and to me it looked a bit like blood.  At the time that I had painted this, I had also started to think about good and evil and the reality of an all-knowing God who is good.  When I look at this, it reminds me of that time of my early faith, and also how a simple picture can be the tool to express a personal story.