Although my art works are well accepted and my art practice appreciated, I still feel i would like to explain myself- why I mainly paint portraits of black people and why as a white woman I paint black portraits?
If you are looking at an artist’s practice, it is good to look at their entire practice. I was always a figurative artist. Human body was always main subject i paint. A motivation. An Inspiration.
Moving to Ghana years ago was very new to me. I spend most of my adult life here and I call this place home. Placing myself in a very remote village helped me to better understand the local people, their traditions, culture and the meaning of tradition in their lives. A natural step for me was to start to portray the people i lived with and people who surrounds me daily. I paint by live model few times a week- a quick, 45 minute sketch of a neighbours: fishermen, young mothers, the chief of the village, his family and others.
Moving to Accra I started to become fascinated by how people in this city are making their living. I started to portray people in their daily habitats. I turned my sketches into large paintings, combined with a lot of materials and added symbolism.
While working on my large canvases, I continue to sketch random people once a week. My models here in Accra are usually unemployed or panhandlers or simply the people who want to be painted.
I feel, in that way, we help each other- while I am playing with paint, observing their faces and body so precisely, they rest and enjoy looking at my work evolving in front of their eyes and slowly turning to something. I usually end up with some good, but also some very bad sketches, while they walk home with a fair daily payment. We learn from each other and we inspire one another.
I prefer to paint a woman’s body. It inspires me- the curves, the power,… I found many Ghanaian women to be fearless, strong, proud and therefore beautiful.
I’m not looking for models that fit the traditional standard of beauty. I want my models to be themselves. It is very much about the woman and the power behind the woman.
In this way I started to dig back in my brain and noticed that every person who influenced, encouraged and supported me to pursue my artistic career was female- my mother, my high school art teacher, my university mentor. I connect them with some other women who shaped me into who I am today (by the music I listen to, books I read) and in one way they helped me to better understand myself and also a life here in Africa. In their honor I started to work on small portraits called MUSES.
2020 has started and I know it is a significant year for me. It will be my first year after university that I decided to fully pursue my art career. I’m going over a lot of changes and in this moment I look to these powerful women as motivation. Motivation to keep on going and not give up. At the same time this is reflected on my larger canvases, too. I have started to see my models as my muses. And that’s exactly who they are- a personified force who is the source of inspiration for a creative artist. I place them on my large canvases, right in the center. They become attention and I let them be seen.
BLACK LIVES DOES MATTER!!!
Tjasa Rener
