Large Scale

Grandfather Cloth
2024

Mixed Media and Gold Leaf on Brown Paper
11.5 x 9.8 ft

  • Large Scale: Large Scale is a collection of large-scale works that unfolds through movement, memory, and improvisation. The scale is intentional:  to allow the body to move in ways that unlock the body’s inherent wisdom. 

    Arms outstretched, legs akimbo, swishing from one polar plain to the other allows for the flow of non-verbal information to be transmitted through the hands and into movement of pigment; a choreography of lineage and intuition. 

    Deeply inspired by the jazz-making philosophy of South African composer Nduduzo Makhathini who in his 2023 dissertation “Breaking into Sound: Dis/Locating Ntu Cosmology and Improvisation in South African Jazz” explains his practice of jazz making as “a process in improvisatory realms that dialogues, intimately, with cosmology.”  The Artist approaches painting as a similar communion. 

    Incorporating the flow of intuition, cosmological guidance and ritual into art making, The Artist is likewise, communing with something greater than herself.  Through this form of making, words come forth in a slew which become abstracted verses that accompany the works. 

    Grandfather Cloth: In particular speaks to the Artist’s own lineage, with the presence of her grandfather and the generational weave of those who came before and those yet to come - knitted in the fibers of timeless being.

    The following words accompany grandfather cloth through a prompt given to Naomi by the Trinbagonian poet, novelist, jazz musician and  academic Anthony Joseph - threading poetry into painting, body into cosmos, memory into form.

    ‘threads, Anastacia weaving a generation

    before. You, breathing fiber into

    life. Us, dipped in Nana's

    dye. Patterns, Lola's batik of

    fire. Me, sown from you.’

Untitled
2024

Mixed Media on Brown Paper
11.5 x 9.8 ft

  • Large Scale: Large Scale is a collection of large-scale works that unfolds through movement, memory, and improvisation. The scale is intentional:  to allow the body to move in ways that unlock the body’s inherent wisdom. 

    Arms outstretched, legs akimbo, swishing from one polar plain to the other allows for the flow of non-verbal information to be transmitted through the hands and into movement of pigment; a choreography of lineage and intuition. 

    Deeply inspired by the jazz-making philosophy of South African composer Nduduzo Makhathini who in his 2023 dissertation “Breaking into Sound: Dis/Locating Ntu Cosmology and Improvisation in South African Jazz” explains his practice of jazz making as “a process in improvisatory realms that dialogues, intimately, with cosmology.”  The Artist approaches painting as a similar communion. 

    Incorporating the flow of intuition, cosmological guidance and ritual into art making, The Artist is likewise, communing with something greater than herself.  Through this form of making, words come forth in a slew which become abstracted verses that accompany the works. 

    Untitled: Among the large-scale works in this collection, is Untitled. This painting stands as a deeply personal passage. It is an intimate traversal of time. It moves through age, layering the sensorial weight of years with the ephemeral presence of now. The gestures are metaphysically rooted to the land of Trinidad, the Artist’s place of birth; a terrain felt more than remembered.

    Again working on brown paper as the substrate of skin, the surface of the work becomes a vessel for ancestral breath, childhood soil, and the quiet wisdom of becoming. The words raised through the making of this painting:

    ‘out of the darkness we awoke no dread

    no mistake

    light chasing shadows re-volting truths illuminating blocked mindories gates of emotion openings profuse, my oh my

    left hip joint

    on the tail end crackle of thunder a curtain shower of rain all upon my shoulders da da da dum

    no

    pi pi ping pong the midnight smell of flowers and the rise of a new dawn due

    the bell tolls

    at first I was afraid but

    the bell tolls now we are not

    and under my left armpit tingles unlocking what all those books could not

    one day I will read these words and

    we stand strong rooted

    the all seeing all knowing I power from within’