Three weeks of painting.
Three weeks of painting. It started as a butterfly.
Three weeks of painting. It started as a butterfly.
Day and night, for three weeks.
And finally, it is done.
I turn the same painting upside down, as Iya Afilaka instructed me. And it still remains legible.
Why?
Because we have paid Iba (homage)
to the vagina that is turned
upside down, yet
does not drip
Title: Lyrics of JoyMedium: acrylic on canvasDate: 2018Where art you joythat we all seek youand find you not?Joy is in eating less,and eating carefully, simply.Joy lives in giving more,Title: Lyrics of JoyMedium: acrylic on canvasDate: 2018Where art you joythat we all seek youand find you not?Joy is in eating less,and eating carefully, simply.Joy lives in giving more,
As the Chinese launches successfully the second wave of the colonization of Africa, after learning from the techniques of divide and conquer that Europe used for the first wave of conquering the continent, it became necessary for me to do this painting.
I also want to refer to the poem I wrote a couple of months ago, titled, “My Teacher Taught Me Nonsense.”
The countdown begins
as moments tick down
A stream of joy
when the sun
is not enough.
and when the sun
is febrile, she
offers needed shade.
Another painting that I just extracted from my garage is this dark work.
There is an interesting story behind it.
In the year 2000 or 2001, the British Museum invited me to give a lecture as part of the ceremonies held in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, and also to mark the completion of the Great Court built as an extension of the main museum building. They wanted me to address the body as my topic.
Yesterday at age 79,
Tony Allen, joined the ancestors.
Allen, born in Ghana,
was Fela’s lead drummer and bandleader
for many many years.
But the drummer is typically positioned
at the background of the stage,
and you hardly ever see them.
The singer is always in front.
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.
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?
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.