FAMILY PORTRAITS — Works from the Family Portraits series.
As an artist who is an orphan, I am deeply concerned about family, its importance and what it feels and felt like to have one. Both of my parents had passed when I was 20 years old; as a young adult, I was not sure how to deal with the emotions. As I grew older, I decided to go through family photographs just as a way of reliving the moments, trying to understand the times in those pictures and what they must have felt like.
Aside from expressing my figures in the physical identity of where I am from—a dark-skinned African race—in this body of work my subjects in a dark reddish-brown skin tone is intended to evoke a nostalgic feeling in the mind of my viewers.
Expressing myself emotionally being an orphan, through my paintings, it reminds me of my parents and what it would have felt like to still have them around and the kind of life they must have lived from my own point of view, simultaneously preserving my memories of them.
I want my viewers to develop a sense of deep visual connection whenever they are faced with my works.
