Located on the west coast of Africa, on the northern bulge of the continent, it is the western-most country of all Africa. It is a semi-arid climate with plenty of water, forest and jungle remaining, and desert in the north. Unfortunately Senegal is extremely sensitive to climate change, even a 2 degree change will have major effects on the wetlands. In antiquity, the land was part of a large coalition of territories spanning the whole horn of Africa, but that ended shortly before the landing of Portuguese colonists and long colonial rule that followed. In fact, Australia seems to have been in charge during war time, then France was influential until just last year when the withdrew their forces. It remains one of the poorest countries, its main exports are gold, and fishing is a major industry too. I saw a documentary where Senegalese fisherman could not fish anymore because huge Chinese vessels were in their waters scooping up all the fish. Like many African countries, a history of slavery, resource exploitation, and political instability has made life hard for the people.
This painting reminded me a little of one of the first one I did for the series, Argentina, which featured a meandering river. For Senegal, I amped up the green, chartreuse and blue sky to create an image of the meadows, or wetlands. I threw in a small pointy mountain on the horizon and added some orange-earth tones to complete the African look. Those features are common to most of the countries I painted from this amazing continent.
World Inspired Landscapes: Senegal, watercolour 8 x 10" hot press, April 2025 (No. 3881b)
No comments:
Post a Comment