This is a recently completed piece I call: Shape, Color, Home. I’ve stayed here on all of my trips to Ghana. 24″x36″ acrylic on canvas. It was inspired by a 2019 trip to Winneba, Ghana and created as an homage to the cultural aesthetic of bold geometrics and bright colors common to the architecture and the everyday clothing people wear. I was going for something that was, at once, familiar and alien that distorts space and depth with dizzying color and heavy textures. The piece is also reflective of vibe inherent in the food and the music of some of the warmest most welcoming people I’ve ever met.
This is a piece I’m currently working on. I was an early adopter of digital art tools, so this technique with these 3/16″ squares of color serves as an analog hollaback to the low bit-depth days of early digital art as well as the work of mosaic artists from deep history. I love working with paper, but one of the reasons I chose this technique was, to quote an artist friend: “The time and effort that it takes to create art is, in itself, a rejection of the mindless pursuit of production and profit.” The process is meditative in that it requires both incredible focus and an emptying of the mind. It’s been therapeutic for me to work on it. I’m hoping to create a dreamy beach scene and I hope the finished piece has a similar calming effect on the people who experience it.
grapholio X 