About the Project.

The brief was quite open, and in that I was blessed with that rarest of opportunities — the chance to create something unique, to the work and its creator; artwork that does not supersede, but complements and supports. It was not lost on me that around the time Ms. Chigama first shared her initial manuscript draft with me in 2019, I was also on the edge of a precipice of my own — one of metamorphosis.

I am not what I was … but also not yet what I am becoming … Or who I am becoming. The idea of being/becoming is something I have been exploring for the better part of three years. As an artist, as a woman, I have been exploring my own sense of womanhood and what that means to me, in the society that we live in. As part of this exploration, I painted 4 pieces as a part of my process in 2020, while working on the cover of this manuscript. I wanted to create something as — emotive and drawing in as the poems I had the privilege of being granted access to. It is the wonder and mystery of creativity that it can find its embodiment in so many mediums, from language to music to canvas, and oh the joy when two mediums meet!

This project is definitely one of my favourites and thus I was very happy to lend it my signature painting for 2020, ‘The Seedling’ as its cover along with another painting within, and some little illustrative embellishments sprinkled throughout the book’s pages — sprinkled not to distract or take attention from the poems, for they stand in their own league alone, but to present, sometimes frame, occasionally lend some whimsy — but wholly celebrate a manuscript of work that needs none of it to leave a lasting impression in the hearts of those who read it.