Artwork description:

This image explores the history associated with Les Demoiselles d'Avignon subverting the original through using images gathered from a variety of archives associated with the first American Black Women of Science, computers, neuro-surgeon, psychologist, medicine etc. mixed with some ex-slaves, juxtaposing the journey taken from slave to emancipation to pioneer, being that America is the land of the pioneer.

I'm subverting the original Picasso image to break away from the tired tradition of women portrayed in art as nudes, prostitutes, mistresses or passive partners. Here the image uses the images of educated women who have pioneered new pathways for society and future generations, emancipated from the past to forge a new journey in the early to mid-20th Century and onwards where they strove to gain the right to vote, to work, to earn a living and to be remembered as individuals and pioneers in their own right.

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This image was created through a process known as Aluminium Lithography, developed from the Lithographic process of oil and water resist. These prints are very limited and each are generally unique, being that they are not like stone lithography and off-set printing methods where a few can be pulled.

Usually this process allows me to create an Artist Proof for my archive and one or two main prints for exhibition/ sale before the aluminium foil is destroyed, ensuring a very limited amount of these prints in circulation. Sometimes this printing method will allow a couple versions to be pulled from the plate, but each print can change through the gradual degradation of the aluminium surface, leading to a more aquatint form of printmaking.

[This is a lithographic working drawing created for a proposed painting and money raised from this image will fund the larger painting]

Materials used:

Aluminium Foil, Chinagraph Pencil, Oil Based Printing Ink, 150gsm Paper.

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