I Painted Mami Wata Before

"Boy From Togo" 1995 by Amy Crehore

The Mami Wata image is on the wall behind the boy in this painting of mine. I was looking in a book of photos of Africa and found a picture of a faded wall with symbols painted on it. I added the flag of Togo. The boy is imaginary and the cat is, too, although I'm sure I looked at references and pieced it all together. I thought it would make a nice contrast to have him holding a jet black cat against his dark brown skin. I still like this painting.

The Art of Amy Crehore

Mary's Monkey

I found this image here. It's a sweet-looking monkey. I dig the face.

Follow the link for a little poem about Mary and her monkey. Funny.

The Art of Amy Crehore

Sirens, Mermaids and Loteria Cards

One thing leads to another and I just realized that my new painting, "Snake Tamer's Ditty" is actually a siren/mermaid motif. I was not at all conscious of it when I drew it, but now it all makes sense. The way that I twisted the girl's legs. And the way she is lying beside the ocean. The African Mami Wata image that I blogged earlier is actually a snake-tamer and mermaid combined. Yet, I never even thought about Mami Wata until after I blogged my painting.

I started to surf the internet and I found some incredible things. I found this website with various decks of Loteria cards. There is usually a siren/mermaid card in these decks (one is shown above along with a couple of other nice cards- I always liked Loteria cards).

The bottom image is a medieval mermaid that I found on a site that is all about Mermaids. I love the musical theme of this image.

I will blog the rest of the things that I found in subsequent posts.

The Art of Amy Crehore

Shiori Matsumoto's "Birthday"

"Birthday" Painting by Shiori Matsumoto copyright 2007, oil

Shiroi Matsumoto, my Japanese friend, has redesigned her website. She has posted some new work on it that is very, very nice. I like this one called "Birthday". Shiori told me that she actually drew the sketch for it on her own birthday. Shiori is quite an accomplished painter and she is taking part in a travelling group show in Europe that is called, " Venus and the Female Intuition" organized by SALBRU publishing (I think it will also be a book). It begins in Denmark this month and travels to the Netherlands and then, finally to France in August.

Shiori Matsumoto

(Peter van Oostzanen on deviantart has more details about this show.)

The Art of Amy Crehore

Tiny Pineapple Gallery

The first illustration of a pineapple in the New World appeared in 1535

Scott Joplin Sheet Music
Hauling Pineapples - postcard

I was looking for some pictures of pineapples and I found this cool website by Grettir Asmundarson called Tiny Pineapple with a

Tiny Pineapple Gallery.

These are some images from the site. Check out the link. The pineapple is a very popular motif. In fact, my mom collects pineapple objects.

The Art of Amy Crehore

What is Hoodoo?

It's not Voodoo. Hoodoo is African American Magic.

Read up about it here: Lucky Mojo

(Article by Catherine Yronwode)

That's a High John the Conqueror Root in the bottom picture. It smells really, really pretty and it's a lucky root, but it comes in funny shapes and sizes resembling doodoo.

(This post is dedicated to Datura Morris)

The Art of Amy Crehore

Freaky-cool Snake Woman

This is an image from an old postcard that I found on the blog, Femme, Femme Femme.

You might want to check out this blog. They have taken their cue from my blog and have searched for and found more odalisques from artists such as Corot and Renoir, plus many other brilliant nudes by obscure painters such as Leonid Frechkop, Mark Gertler, Francesco Menzio, Frederick Carl Frieseke, etc. Very interesting!

The Art of Amy Crehore