Eli And Friend 2020

Cornelius Annor made this untitled painting of Eli and a friend with what looks like oil on canvas. I love the directness of his approach, where the joy of painting is so evident in every mark. Up close, you can see how the patterned fabric of one figure's dress is laid down like a kind of map, each square distinct, but blended into a larger field. Look at the way this contrasts with the scraped and scrubbed texture of the background, the weave of the canvas almost fighting its way through the layers of white and grey. The bodies themselves, rendered in a smooth, almost classical style, are a study in contrasts: one a field of warm browns, the other a cool, flat white. I am reminded here of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, whose paintings also find a quiet joy in the act of capturing a likeness. Ultimately, it’s the open-ended nature of Annor’s painting that grabs me, a reminder that art is a conversation, not a lecture.