‘Requiem For The Dreams Deferred’
Oil + Acrylic on un-stretched Canvas
18 x 24 inches
July 2020SOLD
I started "Requiem for the dreams deferred" a midst all the protests and riots that followed the tragic killing of George Floyd. It’s a lot darker than a lot of my pieces as I wanted it to echo the harsh realities of today’s social climate and in response to people’s outrage at these recent events.
It feels like we’ve been in this vicious cycle for years, constantly chasing a world where we can all be seen and treated as equal, seeing a little step towards improvement followed by a stream of tragedies shining a light on how little progress has really been made. As a person of colour, I remember growing up, my dad would always ask me: “Do you know how bright a black star has to shine, in order to be seen? You’ll have to work twice as hard to get to where You want, then even harder than that to earn the respect you deserve, You have to be 10 times more aware and never let your guard down". These are the things kids from minority backgrounds are constantly having to be reminded of. When will the day come where we don’t have to tell our children that it’s not that they are not good enough but it’s this world that sees them in that way? That they don’t need to exceed excellence just to be acknowledged and finally have their voices heard?
With this piece I wanted to reflect on the journey so many of us are trying to make in search of something better. Generations of people, still on the same path to find some sort of stability or hope something that shows all the sacrifices and the losses, were not in vain. I painted the orange path with reference to the yellow brick road from the wizard of Oz but painted the path leading out from a target, to show that often the road we take is not without obstacles and is often obstructed by the fact we have to manoeuvre through life with a target on our backs.
The eclipse I painted is to symbolise change pre-empting a new phase/chapter in evolution. “At a lunar eclipse, the shadow of the Earth falls across the face of the Moon bringing unconscious feelings to the surface, grounding them in reality.” The darkness that an eclipse brings looming over us represents how It often feels like things have to get worse in order to get better. ‘They are culminations of emotional cycles that have run their course, and they encourage us to let go of emotions and attachments that are no longer serving us.’