LION OF JUDAH
Every semester at John S Donaldson Technical Institute where I teach graphic design, students who want to get into the programme swear to me that they love to draw. When they get around to showing me their work, there is usually an image of Bob Marley, a Marijuana leaf, Pokimon, Yu-Gi-Ri and other common pop culture images they copy from magazines. The Jamaican imagery is so common that I am saturated with it. Everybody of a certain age has something in yellow, red and green. It is everywhere. Yet I must say that this specimen of the Sphinx like doubling of a lion and a man at its centre is very sensitive and appealing.
The artist shows a regard for the colours of the shed and for the most prominent spot to put his painting. The lack of text and the simplicity of the drawing, particularly the use of black that defines the man�s hair that also looks like a mountain when you look at the image as a whole makes it more interesting because it is not as straight forward as it may have seemed at first. On further investigation the hair on the right and on the left of the lions are deliberately different. This purposefulness also enhances the work. The red mouths of the lions and their bared teeth tell us that the artist is using imagination, especially for the paws of the lion. There is difficulty in deciding what to do with the profile of the lions, and they look like cartoon people and less like actual lions. But overall the painting is one of the more memorable that I have seen in some time.
Adele Todd 2005 |
