Congo Pride (Kayij-Wint)

by Godfrey J. Ellis – 12×16 acrylic 2020

One of my favorite students, who went on to earn a PhD and become a colleague, was Kaj Kayij-Wint. I offered her a painting of her child and she asked for her mother, Kona, instead. Kona is 72 years old and extremely soft spoken with a habit of sitting in the background shadows.  We weren’t sure how she felt about having her a painting.  We showed her the art scrapbook and she said little. At one point, she got up and disappeared up the stairs.  Oh…. But she came back a few minutes later in full and colorful native Congo dress including a matching turban.  So, she was obviously excited about it, although nobody would have known that. But, my! What a challenge! I decided to try a mix-media approach by using a permanent black felt pen to make the difficult ovals, hundreds of them, that were in her native dress.  I was also very nervous about painting her dark skin, which I had never done before. When Kaj picked up the painting, she loved the detail on her mother’s dress (as did everyone else).  I was worried that he had painted her skin too dark, but Kaj was just fine with that.  In fact, her only request for a tweak was in making her mother’s chin even darker!

Here are some photos of the progress: