Description
African Painting Hot Sun – a dance before a white centre
Painting on canvas whitens the middle of the canvas to the brightest point in the picture and sets four tall figures against it with their arms raised above their heads: decorative painting whose heat comes from the ground moving out of orange into a deep red that takes the bottom third. The dresses are smooth and gold-yellow, the bodies reduced to thin dark silhouettes.
Technique and texture
Behind the motif the surface is built in thick relief layers, dragged in places with a cloth so a lower layer breaks through the upper one. The dresses are painted flat and closed with no internal drawing, which makes them read as cut planes. The white in the middle is rubbed into still-wet orange and nowhere becomes clean.
The motif
The figures are of different heights and none is turned the same way; two wear a red head covering and two are bare-headed. The arms are bent into arcs above the heads and the legs are thin and end without feet. Long dark shadows are drawn from them along the bottom edge toward the viewer and set the scene on the ground.
Setting and placement
Tones this hot need a room that can take a strong colour accent — a white or sand wall and some distance. The dragged ground behind the figures needs raking light to show at all, so a wall that takes the light from one side does more for it than an evenly lit one.
- Technique: hand-painted painting on canvas, relief ground layers, cloth-dragging, flatly painted dresses
- Palette: gold-yellow, orange, deep red, white, black
- Ideal for: living rooms, dining rooms, entrance halls
- Character: hot, rhythmic, festive
Choose the size that suits your wall.
