Ethiopia is located in the horn of Africa on the edge of the great rift, and surrounded by many other countries. It seems that Ethiopia is one of the few countries to have mostly resisted colonization by repelling Italian attacks around the turn of the century. Historically the region was a seat of power on the continent and is now one of the most populated countries in the world. On a closer-to-home note, Cilei and I have visited a famous Ethiopian restaurant on Sherbrooke called East Africa, run by a Mom and pop team. There you will encounter a pungent odor of onions and garlic and the most interesting cuisine. They make a variety of stewed dishes and spinach puree, all served on a giant plate with an equally giant sour-dough 'pancake'. Noticeably absent were utensils, the idea was to tear off pieced of the 'pancake' and scoop up the food with it, while sharing the plate with the other people at the table. I just looked it up and it is actually called injera a pancake-like bread.
When researching African landscapes I regularly found images of Ethiopia's sulfur ponds. They are fantastically coloured geographical features unique to the region. Local tour guides bring tourists there to see, and appear to take many selfies in the area even though it seems unsafe to me. Sulfuric acid is pretty serious, we use it in the laboratory and it can be very strong if wafted. I made a few test paintings and found it difficult to get the right colour register for the lemon/lime sulfur pools, it required a slightly neutralized mixture. Including the blue sky helped to create the illusion since as a viewer, you are confronted with the visual paradox of yellow and green water in an otherwise arid environment.
Versions 1 and 2 were on watercolour paper (No. 2987a,b), they showed a top down view on the sulfur pools surrounded by earthy strips of land.
World Inspired Landscapes: Ethiopia version 3, watercolour 6 x 8" cold press, March 2022 (No. 2997a)
No comments:
Post a Comment