I’m pleased to inform my friends that this historic painting which I completed in 1992 is now going to a home that will care for it, love it and protect it from damage and misfortunes. As the single parent of this painting, I feel a sense of loss that she is leaving me.
Henry Drewall, the philosopher of sensiotics, wrote a couple of days ago that, “Moyo mi owon — you have turned pain into paint…for us to see and feel….”
He should know. Sensiotics is the archeology of feelings within the human sensibility.
This painting shared here is about the pain and joy of departures and arrivals, as one of my Transatlantic Series: in 1992, I started it in Nigeria just as I was relocating to the to the United States, where I completed it.
Someone just purchased this work, The Middle Passage.
Smart move, I think.
Art is the smartest investment you can make.
Unlike the stock market, when the market falls, your investment does not go poof into thin air–as billions of dollars are disappearing during this COVID-19 market
Another of the paintings I just discovered in my garage.This painting, however, has the distinction of being one the oldest canvases I have in my possession—painted in 1992. It was the painting in which I had a breakthrough. It was in this painting that I unlearned everything my teachers taught me.I realize that in life, we do not see things like a camera.
This is one of the paintings I just discovered in my garage.
The painting celebrates Robert Hayden’s poem, “Middle Passage.”
It is a really long poem.
The painting focuses on this excerpt:
“That Crew and Captain lusted with the comeliest
of the savage girls kept naked in the cabins;
that there was one they called The Guinea Rose
and they cast lots and fought to lie with her: ”
The character across the floor of the ship being whipped to consent is the lady called Guinea Rose in the poem.
I found this 2001 painting in my garage. At that time, my friend, Moyo Ogundipe was staying with me.As the curator for African and Oceanic Arts at the Denver Art Museum, I had invited Moyo Ogundipe for a solo exhibition at the museum. He had one year to prepare for the exhibition.
Night BreezeIf you didn’t know that when night falls, the sun would rise the following morning and flood the world with light, you wouldbe scared to go to sleep,wouldn’t you?
In a corrupt system
remain stubbornly and fiercely honest.
The single honest man
in a system that is corrupt
is like a tall palm tree
standing among perennial brambles,
blades and grasses. That single
palm tree will remain
As I continue to operate Zoom to teach,
I also begin to reorganize my desk.
This is what my Zoom class/office/desk
now looks like.
The computer energies
from the laptop combine
with the computer energies
from the Opon Ifa
lutophobia II
Do you know the implication
of trading at -$25?
$25 BELOW sea level? It means
if you have a barrel of crude oil,
you are owing $25.
How is that possible?
Yes, it is possible.
The Farmer of Colors
Harvesting a field
of chromatic linguistics
is akin to a dance:
first you must hold
your canvas like a partner
and place layers of
harmonious tinctures over
the picture plane.
I went into my garage and found a harvest of forgotten canvases waiting for me.
This corona break has given me some time to look at what I already have produced.
This is the last painting I did in 1992, just before leaving Nigeria.
You will notice that it is made from gouache.