H72in  W36in   (H183cm  W91cm)

Dated 15-3-96 Price £3,000   $4200

Acrylic on MDF with integral frame

From Photos by Doug Lowe taken in the Gambia and New York.

This project brought home to me the need to use Computer Graphics. The Gambian drummers were taken at a wrestling match, a very exciting, noisy and seriously entertaining event, with much whistle blowing and drum beating. But I needed a large subject in the foreground.

I had fortuitously taken a photo earlier in New York of a pavement musician, using empty paint buckets and other discarded items as his percussion instruments. For a small payment he let me photograph him. What struck me about the New Yorker was how closely he matched the Gambians physically. His ancestors must have come from that part of the world!

I had to guess some of the trimmings on the drum but seem to have got it just about right. I was not entirely satisfied with the rendering of the sweat on the brow of the guy in the foreground. I wanted his skin to gleam with the sweat of exertion but did not succeed well enough.

I stopped painting after completing this picture for about 9 months because we had to move out of our house while it was being extended and renovated. What a mess! Dust got into everything and coated every exposed surface with the finest of persistent powders. It took months to get rid of it once we moved back