Archetype of a Five Star, 2018. acrylic, spray paint, glitter, and cut paper collage on canvas
What do you do when you are trained as a painter and your main medium is oil, but as a mother of three you have to work from home for many years without the proper ventilation system to dissipate the fumes of turpentine? For Jamea Richmond-Edwards, the solution came with resourcefulness and ingenuity. The sculptural quality of the faces in her work, all rendered in ballpoint pen on paper, were an answer to one of her dilemmas: “ink provided a similar permanence to oil - it isn’t fluid, but I love the rawness of it.” If one looks up close at any of these portraits, the word “rawness” doesn’t come to mind - the faces made by Richmond-Edwards look as if they were in 3-D; their eyes gaze back at their spectator with defiance and determination. A second inventive solution gave birth to the collages that form the bodies of her subjects, a combination of layered paper in hundreds of different patterns and colors mimicking textiles are glued onto canvases with backgrounds made of glitter, acrylic and spray paint. https://blog.mariabrito.com/all-posts/2018/11/29/beyond-the-boost-jamea-richmond-edwards-reflects-on-her-childhood-in-detroit
