The pun is the whole painting. A motherboard is the main circuit board of a computer, the piece everything else plugs into, and I painted the Virgin's dress as one, in green and gold, its traces running like embroidery. She stands in the manner of the crowned colonial Virgins, the Child on her arm, both of them inside the stiff triangular robe of a dressed statue, on the crescent moon of the Woman of Revelation. She began as the Virgen de la Candelaria, who traditionally holds a candle. Here she holds a phone, the small light we now carry everywhere. In Santería the Candelaria is honored as Oyá, orisha of storms and sudden change. Where a cross should top her crown, there is an A, the Alpha once again.

Behind them, a small boat crosses the water while a sea serpent rises nearby. It recalls the three Juanes, who in 1612 were caught in a storm in the Bay of Nipe in Cuba and found the Virgen de la Caridad floating toward them on a wooden board inscribed with the words Yo soy la Virgen de la Caridad. She arrived on a board with writing on it. We are all in the same boat, facing hidden threats that may or may not decide how we steer the path ahead. On the hill, a communications tower rises over a small church, two ways of broadcasting belief. This painting is about the power of beliefs and how they spread. Mother of God, mother of boards. The Virgin in Latin America has always been the one I turn to when the institution fails and the water is rising. I wanted to see what she looks like now that the water is rising again.