Durbar Festival, Kano, Nigeria 2016
This young man looks very cool in his finery and shades. Not held for some years due to recent troubles, we were lucky enough
to be VIP guests at last years’ Durbar. Grandstand view and mingling with the riders in the paddock after their parade, it was a very hot but very exciting afternoon!
Continuing with the series of portraits of folks met while on trips to Nigeria. Seems to be a thing developing here. This is Auntie Sade, who I met for the first time in 2014. Sade is the reliable housekeeper and amazing family cook. I’ve often seen her preparing meals with industrial quantities of tomato and pepper (chili) with freshly prepared chicken – feet, beak and all. Now in her mid seventies, she prepares food in the traditional way, and so wraps her
moi-moi in Uma leaves (Thaumatococcus daniellii also known as Yoruba soft cane) rather than foil or plastic bags.
This painting is of the second girl selling Wara in Osogbo. Tiny in stature, and carrying her very young baby around with her (underneath her shawl for this picture). I was interested in her expression, hard working and really tough with a relaxed, confident air. I used the Yoruba words for petite and strong in the background, applying them in no-nonsense Gotham Black to the container wall behind her. On the canvas her complexion is more subtle, but here the image processor in my camera exaggerated differences between tints and hues. Something to do with white paint in the mix possibly.
On trips to Osogbo, we always buy Wara from the same ladies. It is a type of milk curd sold fresh and is delicious cooked either boiled or fried with lemon, and quite healthy, it turns out. Click here for more info and recipes. The ladies are familiar to us and come over to our car if they see us around town, as we will usually buy from them. This time around I asked for photos with a view to using them later. The girls were happy to pose with and without their bowls balanced on their heads. For this first painting I’ve used the light to describe the girl’s features, complete with tribal scars, as she poses in the shade. I covered the canvas in dark washes using a very limited palette and painted thinly throughout, doing just enough to describe what I was interested in and no more.
Keeping the West African theme going, here is a Broad-billed roller that conveniently perched
on a wire opposite the garden wall just long enough for a quick scribble in my sketchbook.
There is a three year gap between that observation and this painting. I kept the rendering lose and simple,
giving the flat blue sky some interest with vertical brush strokes, and showing off the subtle mauve and
maroon colours of the plumage. A fairly common site along roadsides in Nigeria, this species has the
brightest yellow bill that stands out against any background.
This painting is of a Mona monkey, part of a troupe that visit the Osun Grove regularly, where they are tame enough to accept bananas fed by staff and locals. Painted using acrylics, plenty of colour and the use of energetic brush strokes evoke the vibrance of Osogbo, the serenity of the forest and my excitement at being there.
Previously I have experimented with the faces of these monkeys with a view to producing some designs for t-shirts or whatever. Something that’s on the back burner, which is piled high…
Sketches from three years ago used as reference for this paper collage. Agamas, though absolutely
everywhere in Nigeria, never let you get close, and these two females looked down on me with
confidence, verging on smugness, knowing they could dash away at lightning speed.
I’ve recycled pieces of what was a ‘failed’ watercolour painting (we’ve all got them…), in this case
a landscape of a wheat field and evening sky, to hint at the texture and colour of the lizards atop
the garden wall in Osogbo. I omitted the actual wall, as I wanted to concentrate the viewer’s
attention on the lizards under the huge banana leaf. It may have been interesting to include
some shards of glass for a spot of urban realism, but I decided against it. For the impression
of bright sunlight bouncing off of every surface, it seemed ‘less is more’ was the way to go.
I’m producing some small African bird paintings seen on recent trips
to Nigeria. Choosing as a subject the Variable Sunbird that came into
the yard at the house in Abuja, visiting the flowers (sometimes quite
noisily for such a small bird). As a starting point, I looked back through
my sketchbook notes and used some photos of the porch wall, heavily
textured and stained with algae.
To try and keep it fresh and lively and not overwork things, I decided to
mock up a version in paper collage. This way I could work out the pose,
and placing of elements, but also my limited stock of coloured paper
forces me to simplify. Male variable sunbirds have iridescent plumage
that reflects brilliant metallic turquoise and green turning to purple,
but can appear plain black or even dull olive in certain light. I was after
nailing this early on, so when getting around to a painted version
using the collage as the main reference, I won’t get distracted with
unnecessary detail and ‘realism’. Hopefully I may even end up with
something I had in my mind’s eye to begin with…just for a change!
The two-tone leaves, and diagonal cuts in the clay pot recall
some African textile style, and the whole composition ended
up being about colours and shapes, and quite poster-like.
I’m quite happy with it just now, but never one hundred
percent certain anything is finished, maybe that’s a good
thing though?
On a cold windy day back in November 2016, we descended on photographer Dan Tidswell’s studio in Colchester, UK, to photograph start up company Dark Secrets Cosmetics first lipstick range. Aimed principally at women of colour of all ages, the images were to nod heavily towards West African and specifically Yoruba culture, with a contemporary, pulse quickening mood.
We took the opportunity to shoot a ‘behind the scenes’ style video too, deftly shot by Chris Reeve. More on that later. Roger Whitelock took the photos, and the makeup artist was Nigerian Joy Adenuga. Joy also suggested the fantastic models Shumi, Alexsandrah and Suelen. They needed very little in terms of art direction, so professional…thanks ladies!
There were lighter moments, work can be fun too, right?
YUGE thank you to everyone involved, it really was a great day!
Below are two canvases commissioned as part of an environmental design package for a firm that creates bespoke electronics systems. Both pieces are quite large, about A0 size, (32 x 46 inches) and will be placed in a so called ‘break-out’ space.
The design was worked up digitally, printed and mounted and then worked on with acrylic paint with impasto paste, card and paper, achieving a layered effect. They were a lot of fun to do!
