Santa Lucia Oyá Drawing

This portrait depicts Luzia, a young woman I met in el Pelhourinho, the historic center of Salvador, Bahia’s port city and capitol several years ago. Her powerful, clear eyes mesmerized me, demanding my attention then and inspiring this portrait now. Luzia’s unusual green eyes also inspired me to color the text blocks the same color as her eyes, adding a counter-rhythm to the floral pattern repeating behind her, a reworking of an 18th century tile pattern I photographed in a neighboring church. From the moment I stepped outside the gates of my 2011 Sacatar Foundation Artist Residency, on Itaparica Island, in Bahia, Brazil, I found myself wading through waves of West African Yoruban spirits, as palpable as the waves of the Atlantic lapping the nearby shore. Welcomed into the neighboring community and Candomblé houses; befriended by neighbors and richly-costumed, flamboyant Bahianas; and invited to paint a mural for the village church; I began creating portraits of these Afro-Brazilian women I met, and portraying the Candomblé spirit world into which I was generously introduced – a process that continues to engage me, six years on. The collection title, “Pages from a Bahia Diary,” refers not only to this being a visual record of my experiences, but also to the substrata on which these artworks are realized: the toned and tattered pages of a rare folio-size, 1940 Portuguese-language republication of a 17th century Dutch text, O Brasil Holandês by Gaspar Barléu, which I acquired on some inspired whim twenty years earlier and carried with me to Bahia. As I learned on my arrival, the book extolls the history of the colonial Dutch empire of Brazil. And thus, in my repurposing, its pages become a conversation between foreground and background, in which the Afro-Brazilian women I befriended – descendants of those enslaved under Dutch and Portuguese rule – emerge from and assume power over this history of colonization and enslavement. As more than one Bahian sagely assured me, “The book was waiting for you to come here.” I draw with color pencil and crayon directly over the 80-year-old pages of the book, and consider the ways in which time makes its presence felt in these pages – through toning, stains, and so forth – integral to the narrative. Some of the markings laid down in the drawing process result from working on texture surfaces. Additionally, the text blocks on the pages provide occasional inspiration, as compositional suggestions; other times it is the meaning of the text that impacts what is drawn on the pages. The book pages are folio-sized, each roughly 18 inches high by 12 inches wide, and of a glorious texture – laid paper, no longer manufactured, was made by laying the cellulose pulp over a screen to dry (hence “laid”), which produces a miniscule ridged surface. I attach pages with acid-free professional bookbinder’s tape on the reverse, to create larger works, such as this one. Because the pages are uniform in size, even a six-by-six-foot drawing folds down to the size of one page for easy transportation. Collectors generally exhibit these works floating in a box frame, and attached along the top.

Drawing:color pencil on Paper

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:54 W x 48 H x 0.1 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.