EKOW STONE
I want to bring forward messages of origin and creation through my work. I like depicting mythic events and scenes of becoming and manifestation. That’s why I like stippling (i.e. using dots to create lines and forms) plant life, roots, branches and ancestral figures in terrestrial and celestial planes. A lot of the times when I finish a piece I think: “this could be what The Beginning was like”, and I hope to communicate that sort of imagining to people who engage with my work.
I’ve been drawing off and on since I was a kid, but it was back in 2014 that I really started to commit. I had a boring coffee shop job with a lot of time to kill so I would draw and later stipple for most of my shift. Motivation to stay with it comes from within and without. Something inside me pushes me to create but the support and encouragement from friends and family is crucial. I can admit that I need some degree of validation to keep creating.
Yeah its the often anonymous artists whose stolen works are held captive in museums around the western world. African and Indigenous art forms are better than anything that ‘modern art’ has produced. I try to circumvent all the masters of aesthetic colonialism like matisse, picasoo, miro, gauguin etc. and look at work from which their ‘revolutionary’ ideas were stolen. Ancient art is also really inspiring, work from different worlds and created under different ontologies really inspire me i.e. Ancient Egyptian, Islamic Golden Age, Celtic, Aztec etc. Current artists who influence me are friends honestly: Curtia Wright, Oreka James, Sylvia Limbana, Sydné Barnes etc. I also think nature surpasses any human creator tbh and so I have been looking towards making work that is more socially and ecologically integrated and mimetic. Not just work isolated in a gallery on white walls but outside serving some function beyond ‘looking good’.
Try as best you can to be honest with yourself and those around, and try your best to communicate that in open way.
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