Portfolio > Oil Paintings/Charcoal Drawings_Old Time Songs & Stories

"Intersections" is about how the banjo might have been a religious object in West Africa and later in the Caribbean among enslaved Africans, and still later in North America among the enslaved Africans. I must give credit where credit is due for my inspiration for this painting: Kristina Gaddy in her wonderful book "Well of Souls," posits the idea that the banjo and its closest ancestors, West African Spiked and Semi-Spiked Lutes, where religious object that functioned in religious rituals to conjure and contain the souls and spirits of ancestors. I interpret this to mean that banjo is a conduit that conducts spirits (via the banjo neck) into a safe space and place while visiting this earthly plane (into the banjo head, which originally was not a hoop but a gourd and thus more container-like). According to "Well of Souls," containers, too, are spirit-holders.

My painting strives to represent this intersection: I have been learning and trying to conjure, so to speak, Joe and Odell Thompson (seen along the left edge of "Intersections") to help me learn and play with the same spirit and life their wonderful songs and tunes. Joe and Odell are from the Piedmont of North Carolina as I, from Mebane; they were local music heroes of traditional music, who preserved ancient, African American folkways that greatly influenced Old Time music, but until recently whose achievements had been neglected. In "Intersections" their spirits and music greet me as I half sit, half lie enamored.

Color plays a big role. The sky is iridescent, suggesting heaven and the domain of spirits, and the earth, painted in entirely different color harmony, suggests the red clay of the Piedmont of North Carolina, Joe and Odell's and my own home. Odell's and my banjo head are iridescent although they are surrounded by earth tones. They insinuate that they are wells, containers, or homes-on-earth for souls while they visit us mortals.

Color thus is symbolic, but also has a distinctive painterly function, that pairs two entirely different color harmonies whose clash I hope will resonate and vibrate like a struck or plucked banjo string.