Returning to the Black Canvas
"The white sheet of paper is not neutral. Neither is the black canvas."
When I began painting during lockdown, I worked almost exclusively with Indian ink on white paper. At the same time, the Black Lives Matter movement was unfolding around the world. My earliest paintings were stark and uncompromising—black female forms emerging from white paper through line alone. They were graphic, direct and emotionally charged. The ink allowed these fragmented bodies to remain alive despite their simplicity.
Moving onto canvas changed everything.
What had felt so immediate on paper suddenly lost its vitality. Black no longer carried the same depth or presence. It flattened. The bodies disappeared into the surface.
I realised I didn't yet know how to paint black.
The years that followed became an education in colour. Learning how colour creates light, atmosphere, texture and emotion wasn't a departure from those early paintings—it was the journey I needed to take in order to return to them.
Now, that return has begun.
The paintings in Imperfect marked the first movement back towards black—not as shadow or absence, but as the ground itself. Sisters in Seven Parts, created for PLATFORM: Simone Brewster, continues that exploration, asking what becomes possible when black is no longer something placed upon the surface, but the foundation from which the painting grows.
