I call Uganda the Vortex. If you’ve felt it then you know, this place holds on like a force of its own. Some of my art inspired from the Pearl of Africa.
People, Light, Blood, Husk (2014)
In 2013, I came to Uganda for the first time volunteering with an organization that provided solar lighting for maternal health clinics. “People, Light, Blood, Husk” was a series I made from the travel drawings of that period. I drew pictures of beautiful strangers, of women in labour, of the rural landscapes and the Kampala cityscape.
I made photocopy transfers of the illustrations on to cloth and painted them with a limited colour pallet of red, black, white and ochre – the colour pallet was inspired by the people, the solar lighting, the births I witnessed, and the dried maize stalks.
Barkcloth Burn (2014)
Bark cloth comes from the Mutuba Tree in Uganda. Learning that the bark is stripped, boiled and beaten to come to its cloth-like form, I was interested in working with the material in a similar- but different – meticulous, elemental manner, by “drawing with the sun” using a magnifying glass to burn lines. Being a freshly arrived traveller, I had no connection to its use in traditional African settings, and so I chose to depict landscapes from my travels.
Bunga Underground Night Series (2014-2015)
In this series I explored the Kampala night and bar scene. The drawings are characterised by short frenetic lines indicating movement, dance, noise and intoxication. There is a juxtaposition of simplicity and chaos in the drawings – a distillation of the sweaty, primal energy. The choice of materials (paper, pens, and markers) reflects what was available at nearby shops.
