I was scrolling through Tumblr, a photo sharing blog platform when I came across these images. Immediately captured by their tremendous richness and vitality, I looked into them. Who were these artists and where could I find more about them?
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These photos are excerpts from Margaret Courtney-Clarke's book-length photo essay about the beautiful geometric paintings made by women in multiple remote West African villages. Photojournalist Margaret Courtney-Clarke was born and raised on a ranch right outside of the Namib Desert in Namibia. In the book, "African Canvas: The Art of West African Women", Courtney-Clarke documents the way these extraordinary women transform everyday objects like a fishing net, a cooking pot, or a calabash into works of art laden with patterns, designs, colors and cosmic significance.
To me, these photos are specifically beautiful because you see these women putting in work to make these beautiful pieces of art while, at the same time, you see them putting in work in other ways, like carrying children on their backs or large pails. It serves to show that these women are dynamic and rounded and they have complexities beyond what we are seeing. The women make the medium with which they create the art using natural pigments from plants or clay. These pictures/paintings are often washed away in the rainy season.
Courtney-Clarke says that her objective in this work is to "document an extraordinary art form - vernacular art and architecture in West Africa - that is not transportable and therefore not seen in museums around the world." The photos capture an unseen part of West-Africa and offer an investigation into a slowly fading way of life. Her work, in a way, immortalizes a form of art that might otherwise slip away unseen by anyone. That does, however, lead my thoughts to wonder what if that's exactly how their art was meant to be consumed. What if their art was mean for the souls and spirits of the artist and those who inhabited their homes?
Courtney-Clarke's glimpse into the homes and into the spirits of beautiful and proud people and a celebration of an indigenous rural culture in which a woman is the artists and her home is her canvas where you see this mixing and mingling of ancient and modern art. There is a simplicity in what seems to be complicated; bright colors and abstract patterns with the familiarity of home as the canvas.
