Original artwork description:

This is a mixed-media painting using watercolour, oil, linseed, damar varnish to create a portrait of an American who was brough over from Africa to work on the plantation during the later part of the 19th Century, receiving her freedom and photographed for the archives in the USA in the 1920s. This painting has been created to replicate the photographic idiom, having the appearance of a small photograph, whilst adding into the mix the many layered histories embued within the image through the hand of the artist.

The painting highlights the hidden reality of slavery and how these practices were still going on in some form late into the 19th and 20th Century, through Article 13 and the injustices like Tulsa Race Massacre, as well as events which lead to further changes in law leading to the Civil Rights Act 1964, a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, and later sexual orientation and gender identity.

Materials used:

Oil paint, watercolour on watercolour paper.

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