Easton Daydream

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By Joshua Donkor
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£8,000.00

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Dimensions (HxWxD):

160 × 120 × 4 cm

Materials:

Oil paint, graphite and image transfers on canvas.

Primary Medium:

Painting

Large
2024
Signed on Front
Ready to display
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Easton Daydream Easton Daydream is based on one of my favourite photos from my Mum’s photo albums. The photo was taken by my Mum in the early 90’s when she had just moved back to the UK after living in Ghana for 3 years. However this time she was also bringing my Dad back with her! My Dad is stretched out on the sofa looking lost in a daydream. The room around him encompasses the entirety of my Mum and my Dads worldly possessions at the time, all squeezed into a tiny bedsit in Easton (Bristol). You can see a crooked bookshelf in the background holding my Mums many books and my Dads old Ghanaian history books. Even their bed is squeezed into the back of the room on the right! This image really captures a period of intense transition for my parents, the contrast of life in Ghana and the UK is vast and to suddenly find yourself back into the UK squeezed into a tiny bedsit together was a real culture shock. Not to mention the difficulties of then finding work especially for my Dad. When I spoke to my parents about their first two months in the UK together they reflected that the main thing they had to acclimatize to was the contrasting pace of life. I think many people can attest to the intensity of life in the UK, this is to the extent that sometimes it feel hard to even catch your breath. Ghana is as opposite to this as possible, if something is planned for the next day its likely to not happen until the day after! I hoped to capture some sense of this time period within this painting by bringing in all of these elements from the original photo and embedding a tapestry of image transfers within the background. These photos show the first few years of my parents lives together in Ghana and the UK and ultimately the merging of their two lives and British and Ghanaian cultures. Even the beautiful batik cloth that is draped around the sofa is a symbol of cultures coming together and the new histories that emerge. My Mum brought this cloth whilst she was living in Ghana and it has become a treasured item that we still have in the house today. These kind of batiks and patterns will often be found in so many Ghanaian and West African immigrant households in the UK. However originally these batiks and clothes were made with wax prints and were actually manufactured by the Dutch and thus hold links the period of colonialism and its ongoing legacy within Ghana and West Africa. Despite their origin they do still contain original Ghanaian and West African patterns and the stories which many of these patterns encompass. They have become seen as quintessentially African fabrics despite this legacy and are another example of the merging of cultures and histories for better or worse.

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