I started this artwork November 17, 2008. After four (4) days of painting, I totally lost my inspiration. I didn’t know what to do next, when to continue and, I lost my desire to paint. So I covered the painting with cloth (I live in Northern Nigeria and it is very dusty and sandy until the rains comes).
The idea behind the painting is to make an image of an African girl as a female-king and not a queen (who is just the wife of a king). I didn’t want to use gold or extreme facial makeup. . . . . . In high school I made a painting of a black pharaoh, so I wanted to make the cloth on her head to look like what a Pharaoh would put on his head. The cloth on her head is from a Yoruba traditional cloth called ‘Ashokay’ (Yoruba people are found in the western part of Nigeria).
Well, around that March-April period, I saw a bulletin from one of my MySpace friend titled something like; ‘Yoruba language has some similarity to that of ancient Egypt’ unfortunately, I couldn’t see the content of that bulletin because it was a video (and my internet connection is too slow to play YouTube videos).
The person that sent the bulleting usually sent these types of very educative and interesting bulleting. Sometimes (especially last year) the topic are sarcastic and I misunderstood there meaning (at first).
Anyway, I re-started the painting again and finished it with even more passion. It took a total of over 56 hours to finished this painting (over 5 months break because of dried up inspiration).
Procrastination? NO! NO!!
Thank you.
Ife’ka Terry
http://www.ifekaterry.com/
