'Why Return to The City of God'

Acrylic on Canvas

20 x 16 Inches

Why return to the city of god -

I started “Why return to the city of God” as a response to an untitled painting from 1959 by Lula Cardoso Ayres, the avant-garde Brazilian painter. Lula Cardoso Ayers often used in his paintings a type of layout I favour in my pieces. The grid like structure is a pattern, which, then was quite recurrent in my work, it is a transposition of how I see individuals packed in tower like accommodations in dense urban metropolis. In the piece by Lula Cardoso Ayres I am referencing, the artist paints workers against a colourful grid like background, but he uses male figures as the prevalent characters, while I favour female characters. I feel it is crucial in my paintings to put forward strong female characters, as the essentially constitute the backbone of black communities, but are too often given a background position in narratives. I find in Lula Ayers painting, only a few women depicted performing minor tasks such as as carers or in position of weakness. In contrast the male figures are portrayed as hard workers or businessmen. In my painting I give the female characters centre stage; I want to show them in the same light that men are depicted in Lula Ayers’ work: strong, hardworking and in charge.