Queen Ascending the Atlantic (Sold)
June
2020
'Queen Ascending The Atlantic' Painted during the lockdown in the Covid 19 pandemic. It now serves as the front cover to the book Twelve Words, published by BlueMoose. It is a mixed media piece comprising mainly of gouache and acrylic. The piece was originally a commission where I was asked to produce something that conjured up the idea of power, sovereignty and immortality over the horrors of the Atlantic Slave Trade. There are two others of the same title, soon to be finished.
She holds a chunk of metal in each hand; in one she breaks the shackles from her wrist and in the other she adorns her head with a crown, restoring herself to her former glory and esteem. The shapes used were to represent melanocyte (in melanin) and the colours of her body to be the same as the ocean, as if rising from the bottom of the sea, not as a lost cargo, but as a mythical super-being with light and flame like flickers, emanating from her head.
This oil painting is the representation image for authentic voices used on a spoken word night aptly named Verse and Vibe with the theme systems, power and control.
Think, Verse and Vibe
That Day
Illustrations by Anthea Cribbin for the poem 'That Day' written and voiced over by Linzi Blue
'Systems, power and control' were the themes to a spoken word, music and poetry night. A collaboration between the poet, myself the illustrator and a music producer compiled the video. Trigger warning: themes of coercive control and D.A
They Say
Illustrations by Anthea Cribbin for the poem 'They Say' written and voiced over by Claire Glennon
'Systems, power and control' were the themes to a spoken word, music and poetry night. A collaboration between the poet, myself the illustrator and a music producer compiled the video. Trigger warning: themes of coercive control and D.A.
'Abstract expressions of the African Diaspora' (Sold). Impressionistic. The first version was mixed medium of acrylic cerulean and phthalo blues dominating the background, with gouache black and sap green thrown forward. This painting was a commission of the first but was requested in greens. On a primed canvas and sealed in Winsor & Newton satin varnish finish. The Jamaican beauty placed centrally, mantled by the left UK influence but keeps her hands behind her back, inspecting and examining, and holds her head like an ancestral African queen. The UK Black woman, holding onto her identity, donning her fragmenting and exploding Union flag and her face divided between black and white, scantily dressed as her clothes are behind her. The African woman on the right, swathed in the Pan-African colours of the red, the black and the green. The bundle in her arms, coloured the same, a precious cargo of life and/or precious minerals? It's abstract. See what your minds sees. Painted predominantly in acrylic, with some coverage in gouache for block coloration.
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