Welcome to my new Art Blog! Here is where I'll be sharing my artwork and merging it with a nonfiction narrative that discusses the artistic process and rationale for making the piece. You can find out more about my art interests, my decisions that led me to becoming a multidisciplinary visual artist and much more by visiting my About Me page.
2019
Acrylic on Canvas
9 x 12 inches
In this piece, I'm drawing on my British/Guyanese cultural heritage. You'll find another piece further down that features Guyana. Plus I discuss an amazing book of the same name.
This image isn't a 'true' abstract piece as it has a representational context. I've broken the 'rules' of abstraction here. Without my representational viewpoint it is an abstract piece and is open to viewers' perspectives. I like that the image can just be, yet is meaningful to me.
The Painting:
The circles theme of my painting depicts my cultural heritage and identity as a fluid and evolving entity. The top circle represents the colours of the Guyanese flag. The bottom circle represents the colours of the Union Jack flag. The middle circle represents my identity positioned between both circles balancing out the Guyanese and English cultural heritages as supporting rather than dominating my identity. The diagonal position of the circles signifies movement.
The background colours red, yellow, and green are the colours of the Rastafari flag — the very same colours of the Marcus Garvey movement back in the early 1900's — and represent the bloodshed of the African people, the natural wealth/gold of the African land and the lush fertile greenery of the African continent. This colour scheme reflects my appreciation of the Rastafari philosophy (not the religion as I'm not religious), and respect for the culture, vegetarian diet, and reggae music.
The painting can be displayed in a portrait or landscape position as long as the background colours follow in the sequence of red, yellow, and green.
Why Circles?
What was I thinking about the image and the deliberate rationale of the circles? Beforehand, I had been working on circles in my sketchbook, which led to more research. According to Thoth Adan in his 'Symbols Based on Circles' blog post: "The circle is a omnipresent, universal symbol with extensive meaning. Without beginning and end, without sides or corners, this geometric shape tells us about perfection, unity, spirituality and life like no other form.
As Pythagoras would say, the circle is the most perfect shape. It withholds all and everything emerges out of it. Every point of the circumference is the exact same distance from the centre. It is infinite and stands for non-existence and eternity. The circle is, to a certain extent, the oldest of all symbols.
Every thought, every form of energy, moves or concentrates in circular or spherical courses. Heat rays are spherically formed, planets circle the sun, atoms circle their centre nucleus, our thoughts circle our problems, circular waves radiate in water from an object touching its surface, etc.
Our life seems to flow in a circle. We enter the world through a circular opening, we grow up in a family circle. We see the world through a circular opening (pupils) embedded in the circular iris, which in itself is a beautiful, circular cosmos of its own." (Adan, 2019).
British/Guyanese Cultural Heritage has been published in Ark Talks Magazine, Issue 1, on 'in-between-ness' and liminality. Issue 1, April 2024, pp. 28-29.
The prerequisite painting to British/Guyanese Cultural Heritage:
(Cuyini – Mazaruni)
2018
Gouache
9 x 12 inches
For this landscape piece I used a reference photograph from the book Guyana (2008), edited by Arif Ali of Hansib Publications. The book is such a wonderful resource, packed full of stunning photographs that showcase the unmatched natural beauty and splendour of Guyana. If there is ever a book to fall in love with it's this one! You could say Guyana the country is abstract in of itself as I've never set foot on its soil, yet I've visited through different mediums. Each time I turn the pages, I'm transported psychologically and spiritually to a land of many waters, outstanding rainforests and the only English-speaking country on the continent of South America and the Caribbean's southernmost state. Here's an excerpt from the book:
"Guyana is a land of contradictions and superlatives. It boasts Kaieteur Falls, the highest single-drop waterfall in the world; one of the largest unexplored and untouched rainforests which comprises over three quarters of the country's 83,000 square miles; and a population, in direct disproportion to its size, of only 750,000 people, representing imports from Africa, India, Europe, China and with its own indigenous people, the Amerindians, who settled here thousands of years ago.
So what is it that makes Guyana such a special place and why has it remained a secret to the rest of the world for so long? The answer lies in its unique magnificence and curious history — the challenges that it has faced over the years as successive political movements have tried to grapple with its unusual combination of fundamental characteristics and found that solutions to its predicaments are sometimes not easy to come by. Could this be paradise, this compelling landscape of breathless beauty and startling power, to which only the truly dedicated and deserving can come to after a long hard search for its ephemeral core? Many who look see only the external image generated by an overzealous media, and miss the true qualities for which Guyana has become renowned; its hospitality, still considered among the finest in the world, its freshness, its unspoiled natural beauty, its contradictory people, curiously both naive and sophisticated at the same time, and among the most creative and resilient in the world. They miss the sensual energy that pervades its atmosphere and fail to notice that in Guyana the skies seem bluer, the stars seem brighter and the air is blessed with an ambrosial succulence that stirs the senses and lulls the brain into forgetting day to day concerns, as the pace slows and the outside world becomes a distant memory. Few who visit Guyana want to leave and all who have passed through long to come again." (Ali, 2008, Pp. 17-23).
Comments welcome!
Thanks for reading.
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