One weekend I was finalising one of the six photobooks I made for my Africa project, the book on Ethiopia. This activity transported me back to journeys I had made there back in the 1990s, right after dictator Mengistu with his red terror regime was ousted. When a friend texted me on Sunday night where I'd been, I found myself texting back: 'I've been in Ethiopia this weekend.' And that is how it felt as I had immersed myself in the landscapes through the photos and my memories of the places I had visited. I had even discovered some new places.
From there I started experimenting on a big sheet of paper, which I taped off in six equal parts. I first drew with charcoal over the whole sheet, ignoring the tape, without any photos in view. And I didn't need those photo's: the landscapes flowed my hands as by themselves. I added wet strength tissue paper that I had coloured with ink , and some paint. Then I cut up the big sheet and worked on each of the six resulting small paintings individually. I added more overlapping layers of coloured tissues, paint and other material such as charcoal and oil pastel. I repeated this process on several big sheets. Attached are a few photos of the process and its outputs.
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