The Ancestors in the Paint series emerged at the confluence of face pareidolia, ancestor veneration, movement, and jazz + blues + R&B music. Each painting begins with a song that I must feel in my bones, my heart, and my soul. Nothing in this series is preconceived or sketched out. The rhythms, melody, lyrics, and instrumental arrangements in each song inform the colors of the painting. For example, “Mack the Knife” called for russet tones of dried blood while Sly & the Family Stone’s “Higher” insisted on a lot of psychedelic red. While listening to a song, the music moves through my body, out of my hands, and onto the canvas. It gets messy. And then I wait—sometimes for weeks or months until faces or body parts begin to appear out of splashes of dried paint. Sometimes they disappear or take on different shapes before I begin to outline each form with ink markers and color them in with oil and acrylic paints. I never know what or who will appear to tell a different side of a song’s story, to deepen its hues. I may include other elements, such as glass glitter and mirror pieces as the painting dictates. I do not control the outcome. I must let go, wait, and see.

My husband made the first video in 2021 of me throwing paint in a friend’s basement to Otis Redding’s classic recording of “Try a Little Tenderness.” The first image that appeared weeks later, on the right side of the canvas, reminded me of one of those old-school R&B singers I used to enjoy at the Royal Theater in the 1960s. Head thrown back, body bent, and wailing. And I knew somehow, without doubt, that every figure who appeared on that canvas was an ancestor who had come to tell a piece of the song’s story. Hence, the title of this series: Ancestors in the Paint. I have subsequently done the outlining and coloring of faces and forms in every other painting while sitting (or standing) next to the ancestor altar in my home. Only once has an ancestor appeared immediately after dripping paint and tears on the canvas while grieving over the health of a son and listening to Wapajea Walks on Water aka Nataska Hasan’s haunting version of “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” My gut tells me it was an ancient ancestor from the future who came to bring me solace. This is why I continue to hang out at the messy confluence of face pareidolia, ancestor veneration, movement, music, and paint to see what else will emerge to give my creative life new meaning.

PROJECT #2: Mama Nef’s Mixed Media Book Art

I love books.  I love how they smell and feel, their different textures and sizes, the way they weigh in my hands and lap, and the foreplay of their pages against my fingertips.  I love the personality of their Titles and colorful covers and their solid-colored covers with no text—that’s so sexy. And how their inner parts get laid,  overlaid,  blocked,  flushed,  and  s           t           r           e           w           n   across the territory of pages for readers’ consumption.  The more delicious the content, the better.            

I love bookmaking, too. It’s the perfect medium for channeling my visual­literary creative selves simultaneously without having to choose to be a writer or a visual artist. It’s also a contemplative practice that centers me in the present, in that holy state of “no mind” where thoughts yield to pure creative impulses. That’s where all the magic happens.  That’s where the art gets made.

“The love is in the details,” says Oprah. And I agree.  It’s in every piece of paper, every color, word, number, font, visual, and appliqué I use.  It’s in every stitch of the spine, every cut, every layer of glue, and each meticulous measurement. Every element contributes to the whole.  It’s a fine, intricate art form.

I may start out with an idea for one kind of book, but the finished piece is always a surprise. All I have to do is trust my creative process implicitly and not be attached to outcomes. Forget about making perfect art.  It’s all about showing up to the work and creating art from the heart. That’s what I call creative freedom.

My book art pieces are, summarily, narratives inspired by Spirit, magic, nature, the marriage of images and words, the indigenous African American experience, the conjure / hoodoo / root medicine tradition, and reverence for life.

Special thanks to my bookmaking partner Jenny O’Grady for daily inspiration; to Rebecca Childers for teaching me how to breathe a book alive; and to Kendra Kopelke for teaching me that “a book can be anything.”