Both Hair of the Dog works employ houndstooth wool surfaces quadruple sealed with acrylic matte gel and clear acrylic gesso, and embedded earthen materials with symbolic meaning. The primary title of each work plays upon the saying, “Bite the hair of the dog that bit you.”

The Hair of the Dog II is embedded with a vertical rectangle window made from a paste made from acrylic medium and the ash of burned palm tree fronds. The 1992 Los Angeles Uprising was precipitated by a number of horrifically dehumanising events, one of which was the 1992 murder of 15 year old Latasha Harlins by a Korean American shop owner who executed the child and was punished with a fine and probation with no time served. Painted with blue tinted white acrylic paint into the black ash paste are halftone lines that translate a studio portrait taken of Harlins as held in her mother’s hand during an interview with news media. The portrait image became widely used and modified by broadcasters of that era.

Painted into the houndstooth with blue tinted white acrylic lines is a still image of digitised footage of the streets of London following the New Cross house fire massacre in 1981 that killed thirteen young individuals. The documentary Blood Ah Go Run by Menelik Shabazz records the Black Peoples Day March of Action as people rallied and marched to demand a thorough investigation into the cause of the fire which community members felt was likely a racist attack upon a house filled with Afro-Caribbean children and teens. In both tragedies, there has never been any real accountability for loss of the lives of these children and the circumstances of their deaths added to rising tensions in 1981 London and 1992 Los Angeles leading to uprisings that lasted for many days and nights.