Nigeria is one of the biggest and fastest growing countries in the world with an economy powered by natural resources, fashion and technology. Its sprawling landscape covers lush mountains, rivers, waterfalls, grasslands and desert. A lot of the world's cocoa bean supply comes from Nigeria, the large fruits grow well there and many cocoa farmers make a living selling to distributors. Unfortunately like other commodity products, the farmers only get a small fraction of what the cocoa is worth at the retail market. Chocolate, at least the real chocolate, requires refined cocoa beans which are processed in Europe or America and sold as all the familiar brands. Some companies try to acquire fair trade cocoa but like coffee, its a difficult proposition to make on scale. The painting shows one of the many waterfalls in Nigeria which are popular with tourists. About half of the painting is just the paper showing, which meant the rest of the design had to carry enough information to give the illusion of a waterfall. Blue sky and trees and some rock ledges at the top and a hint of water at the bottom complete the effect. This is the last World Inspired painting in the batch that I did recently, there are three more countries starting with No and then onto countries starting with the letter O! I am just completing two large doodleism paintings from lab book notes and hope to be on location on the holiday Monday if the weather holds.
World Inspired Landscapes: Nigeria, watercolour 9 x 6" watercolour paper, June 2024
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