27th April 2024
I’ve made a start on Benjamin Zephaniah’s portrait, but the image shows it about half done. His wife, Qian has allowed me to use a private photo she has of their wedding day and he is smiling and obviously very happy. I’ve decided to do 2 pieces about Benjamin. This stitched portrait will be finished with gold leaf and will be free machined with words from The Men From Jamaica Are Settling Down, and will obviously be part of the Windrush series. It’ll be mounted onto a canvas 80cms square, and I may just call it “Icon”.
I will continue with the second one with the images of Brum in the background but at this stage, I’m not sure it’ll be finished in time. I’m working as hard as I can but there’s a lot to do.
13th February 2023
The wonderful Benjamin Zephaniah will be Windrush 5.
I have started on Benjamin Zephaniah against a backdrop of Birmingham drawings, and using his words (with kind permission)……
“Spread the love, show compassion, and wherever you are, don’t trust your government.
Peace,
Benjamin Zephaniah”
24th September 2023
Benjamin Zephaniah has very kindly given me permission to use some of his poetry in this next piece of work. I have been reading his autobiography and poems and making notes of wonderful words I could use. In the end I thought his portrait which is one of the Windrush series, should feature his poem about Windrush, “The Men from Jamaica Are Settling Down”.
I felt it was important that these words were readable, and not knocked back to become part of the piece so was wondering how I could do this. My background which is a collection of sketches/painting I’d made of Brum were too strong and the words wouldn’t show, so wondered what I could do about that. I decided on a layer of gesso with the words then written on top. I said to G, “the background’s too strong, it needs to be whiter” and the title was born.
