Leaning Chumbes
2014
acrylic on canvas
85" x 5" x 3"
Chumbes are belts of the Guambiano an indigenous community in Colombia. This a region now plagued by guerrilla and paramilitary conflict. These traditions are oppressed and suppressed by a new form of colonialism. I created a loom like grid piece and wove each mark through. I did so to translate the illusion of textile but also to keep a formal and poetic cohesion with the way I paint fauna and lace in other works. In turn this is also coherent and owes to how nature was recorded in the painting tradition of Spanish and English colonial illustrations of nature.