© Jaimee Todd
This is the sketch for my latest painting tentatively titled Yemoja, the mother orisha who is represented by the ocean, lakes and rivers. This piece will be part of a series that I plan on doing about the Orishas with particular emphasis on the female Orishas.
I first became acquainted with the Yoruba religion when I was studying the African Disapora in Latin America in college. I was fascinated by how the principles of Yoruba thrived in Cuba, Brazil and beyond and paticularly by how the slaves were able to perserve important aspects of their religion by merging aspects of Yoruba with Catholicism.
I knew a while ago that I wanted to do Yemoja (also known as Yemayá in Santería) but wasn’t quite sure how I wanted to go about it. Interestingly, when I finished Medea, two of my friends, one of whom practices Santeria while the other is Yoruba, thought it was Yemoja. I guess this speaks to the universality of powerful, complex women. But this time, after doing some research and playing around with different ideas, I decided to go with this depiction of her.
Today I plan on working on a color scheme and once I have that down pat, I’ll do the final piece on a larger scale, probably 26″x40″. I’ll be share my progress as I go along!
