First published 15 November 2019
Generally it is not good practice to publish
unfinished work but in this case the post is about the story of the image rather
than the image itself. This canvas is large, 150 x 100 cm. Initially it had a
design composed of a rhomboid, a horizon and two small female figures seated on
the horizon. It had not enough substance, the painting was shelved, resurfaced
and I put my mind to the imagery once more. At night I saw a triangular eyes of
a young woman. I painted the face in and enlarged it into a bust which now is
the centre piece of the design. The face was painted in fragments over the
first coat, which was blue, the blue of the sky above the horizon. I shaded the
facial blue in a few tones but it remained blue while I worked on other
sections. My friend and colleague Patrick Mweemba noted that the face was quite
expressive, overwhelmingly so it seemed to me and its blue appearance made me
uncomfortable. In my associative network blue faces recall the supernatural,
otherworldliness, a return from death. I did not want that. Spirituality is
fine but in this case eeriness is not.
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| Detail of painting "Woman with Triangulat Eyes." Face in transformation |
Painters do have a relationship with portraits they
paint, be these of people real or not. In order to create the experience you
have to live it and if you don’t there nothing to offer the viewer. So I sat in
front of the painting and asked myself “Where does this personae come from? How
did she land on my canvas? What do I want to do with her?”
A solution was not immediately forthcoming but my
resolve to transform her was solid. I put the painting out of sight, relocated
it, put it back on the chairs I use as easels and decided I’d repaint, or over-paint, the facial blue and I did so in the past days. I retained part of
the blue, as a remnant of the history of the image relevant to its present
state and reworked much of the remaining surface to create an appropriate
environment and context for the female bust.
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| Face and painting in transformation. |
One thing this adventure did was to give me an idea -
a speculation it is as how to prove it? – about the reasons why in traditional
African art faces are always or nearly always not individualized but
standardized icons. Masks that have names and in ritual may be associated to a
specific individual but exist outside these incidents permanently as personae
only, like characters in a play. The individualised portrait (mask, sculpture)
is felt as to be an intrusion or capturing of the portrayed person and such
immediate link may easily be abused. There are other reasons as well that one
might think of. There is a certain economy in working with a limited number of
iconized portraits rather than with an unlimited number of individualized ones
suited for one setting only. But then, if you look at the best of portraits in
western art you see that each one of these has become iconic, transcending the
specific to the general, no longer standing exclusively for an individual but
for a character or personality.
*The author is an artist and anthropologist working in Zambia.
