Echoes of Freedom | TheArthur Wright - Sister Thea Bowman
TheArthur Wright
Regular price
$7,000.00
Sale
20 x 30", Bleach w/ copper, acrylic accents
Short Biographical Artist Statement2024
I started using bleach as a medium almost exclusively some twenty years ago (1997). For me it was “Eureka, I have found it!", and I haven’t looked back. Eureka, because of the golden splash of colors and hues it had revealed to me to work with and as I sat down, (I actually sat down), it seemed the color of my future. Most artists use tools of choice to reach out, to touch others with a set of truths or beliefs and something they feel about a universal is-ness as perceived by the artist. It is that way for me. I use a bamboo skewer to apply bleach to black watercolor paper which continues to blow me away as I see what is produced.In 1994 I was informed by a friend that the state of California was namedbecause of a black Amazon queen named Califia. She ruled the island ofCalifornia which sat 'just west of the Territorial Paradise'. Little was known of America in those days but subsequent studies have shown California was actually an island millions and millions of years ago but shifting tectonic plates shoved the island against the continental land mass and helped form the ‘Big valley' and I expect the high Sierra Nevada mountains. When the Spanish writer Garci Hernan Montalvo wrote his story of Califia he placed her on that island. My curiosity knew no bounds, and I searched out the book written by Montalvo and finally located it in Australia, literally on the other side of the earth. I have since tried to turn that story into a cottage industry by painting five other pieces featuring her legend. Lack of space and time prevents me from diving deeper into her story, but I have written much about her in magazines, flyers, presentations, even contributing to a play and an animation that was produced by the Carnival organization in San Francisco, 2003. For that favor they presented to me the animation. I will continue to use bleach as my main tool because there is still much to learn. Unless I have another 'Eureka moment', that is. Perhaps the medium really does choose the artist. I'll have to think about that.
I started using bleach as a medium almost exclusively some twenty years ago (1997). For me it was “Eureka, I have found it!", and I haven’t looked back. Eureka, because of the golden splash of colors and hues it had revealed to me to work with and as I sat down, (I actually sat down), it seemed the color of my future. Most artists use tools of choice to reach out, to touch others with a set of truths or beliefs and something they feel about a universal is-ness as perceived by the artist. It is that way for me. I use a bamboo skewer to apply bleach to black watercolor paper which continues to blow me away as I see what is produced.In 1994 I was informed by a friend that the state of California was namedbecause of a black Amazon queen named Califia. She ruled the island ofCalifornia which sat 'just west of the Territorial Paradise'. Little was known of America in those days but subsequent studies have shown California was actually an island millions and millions of years ago but shifting tectonic plates shoved the island against the continental land mass and helped form the ‘Big valley' and I expect the high Sierra Nevada mountains. When the Spanish writer Garci Hernan Montalvo wrote his story of Califia he placed her on that island. My curiosity knew no bounds, and I searched out the book written by Montalvo and finally located it in Australia, literally on the other side of the earth. I have since tried to turn that story into a cottage industry by painting five other pieces featuring her legend. Lack of space and time prevents me from diving deeper into her story, but I have written much about her in magazines, flyers, presentations, even contributing to a play and an animation that was produced by the Carnival organization in San Francisco, 2003. For that favor they presented to me the animation. I will continue to use bleach as my main tool because there is still much to learn. Unless I have another 'Eureka moment', that is. Perhaps the medium really does choose the artist. I'll have to think about that.
TheArthur Wright
Updated 2024