McFarlane also traveled to Brazil, the second most populous black nation in the world after Nigeria, where he visited the colonial capital of San Salvador, touring ancient Baroque churches where African religious practices such as Candomble’ blend with Catholicism in an amazingly syncretic way. Those centuries-old spaces with their flickers of light filtered through stained glass inspired McFarlane to imagine the enduring black will to live despite oppressive circumstances. For McFarlane, the spaces seemed infused with the residue of their presence, with the lingering spiritual weight of their having been there. McFarlane’s iconography ponders how cultural beliefs persevere and reassert themselves across time, thereby creating formidable history as well as yearnings for escape.
 McFarlane would again encounter a similarly sobering appreciation of the persistence of belief and memory in the dark interiors of churches and mosques in Turkey. From these experiences, he internalized a sense of the mystery that pervades old spaces where people have lived, worshipped and died. Such spaces have been imbued with a kind of spiritual resonance that is immutable: likewise, they contain elemental fragments that suggest an indomitable will to escape.
 In the painting Stool, McFarlane assembles several types of artifacts that associate themselves metaphorically with spiritual concerns. A stool becomes simultaneously a personal icon and a national symbol. The stool, also accurately described as a bench, reminded McFarlane of ones used by artisans when he was just a boy in “Old Jamaica.” It stood in for a sense of place and time in his growing up, while also representing creative force--the power to make things as craftsmen did. In the Ghanaian context, the stool embodied the very soul of the nation, the idea of kingship that unites Akan people and finds expression in the person of the Asantehene. Singularly or in clusters, many containers fill much of the remaining picture area. These bowls and jars symbolize the sacred power of water to cleanse, restore, and refresh. The bowls are also an African equivalent of the chalice, for they are also used to pour libations and for communal drinking of wine. Some of the calabash containers offer large hollowed-out interiors that suggests places of protection, places like the womb that both shelter and nurture. Near the bottom left of the picture beneath more containers are a slice of watermelon and the hint of a serpent moving across the floor. Many burning candles, their yellow flickering illumination relieving the dominant brown palette, provide sacred light tying the painting together and uniting the stool with the distant lights of the upper left corner.
 Dimly lighted spaces bathed in mystery appear again in Interior from the Turkish Series. A vast dark, interior with views down vaulted hallways toward splashes of shimmering light, opens before us, revealing hints of colored light perhaps washed through a clerestory of colored glass. Like a great bathhouse, reflections enliven the floor and bounce back the light from an oculus overhead. No people appear, yet the cavernous space with its grand architecture washed by moody blue shadows, still exudes a sense of lingering human presence. Istanbul light, also from the Turkish Series, continues the nocturnal mood offering a vista of the fabled city lighted in the distance and framed by flanking domes and towers in the mid-ground and candles in the foreground. Only slightly visible are curvilinear patterns in the foreground shadows perhaps evincing the influence of calligraphy in the Islamic world.
 Stool, a work previously introduced, belongs to the Egg Series, and does indeed count amongst its container forms that quite special container known as an egg.  For McFarlane, the Egg Series constitutes a large body of work--large enough to provoke the question What does the egg mean for him?
 The egg as a symbol has several meanings for McFarlane. Sometimes it is meant to remind us of the promise of new life and therefore of new possibilities. This is a common value associated the eggs.  Sometimes it is a symbol of the fragility of the new, because it shelters developing life within thin walls that can be easily broken. Still other times it recalls metamorphosis, because from the simple ovoid shape of the egg emerges creatures of great complexity, much as from a dull cocoon may emerge a beautiful butterfly. In both case, an element of dramatic transformation arises from how one form gives way to another. It is possible sometimes for the egg to symbolize escape since the cracking of its shell gives freedom to the newly born creature. Lastly, the egg represents sustenance. We eat eggs in so many ways--boiled, fried, in cakes and pies--that only with difficulty can we imagine the human diet without eggs.
 In the Egg Series as in others, McFarlane does not tightly script his iconography, preferring to leave a great deal of room for the viewer to interpret the banquet of shapes and icons that he has spread for their enjoyment. The interpretations that I share in this essay, however, are based on conversations with the artist himself.(文：Edmund Barry Gaither/摄影：/责任编辑：baishitou)

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