A conversation about drawing

sketch for Mummy Flowers, charcoal on brown paper, 2025

Location?  currently, Camberwell, London.

How would I describe my art? Lyrical narrative, poetic, storied.

What am I currently working on?  I have this folding screen, like a dividing screen for a room and it is canvas, a giveaway from my street WhatsApp. It is one of these with a pre - prefabricated design on it.  I started painting over that. I transferred one of my sketches  which was of 4 standing mummies onto each of these panels of this free-standing screen. I'm also working on the back of it.

Daily inspirations? Waking up. (laughter) There are a lot of birds in Camberwell and they chorus outside my window. There's all this light that comes through the leaves komorebi I love that.

People and artists I admire? So many. I love Paula Rego (RIP) -  both in terms of her person and her output. It's good when you get the two together. I saw some fantastic art while I was on fellowship in Washington. Of course, I like the artists I've written about - Betye Saar - particularly her assemblages and some of the more amusing works– the wheelbarrow full of black dolls.  Kerry James Marshall. In  many cases, it’s my research that has endeared me to them because it makes me feel that I know them personally. The Baltimore Museum where the art displays are curated so beautifully, they have one of Degas' ballerina sculptures standing opposite a straw skirted sculpture by Simone Leigh and that is such a beguiling conversation to happen upon. The Rubell  too is a beautiful museum – there is a wonderful work in there by David Hammons - you actually need to stand in front to fully appreciate it. It is a head shaped stone perched on a plinth and the stone has afro hair (growing) on it. It has such a poetic human, ancient quality. I caught up on recent UK shows too.  It was amazing to see the Donald Rodney – an artist I knew from many years ago, at the Whitechapel. It was heartening perhaps because I am estranged from the whole UK ‘black art conversation’ now - by choice. I saw the Christina Kimeze show with all that glorious, singing colour. The Noah Davis at Barbican was stunning, I nearly bought the T shirt – I have re-imagined one of his works as part of my ‘Open Umbrella’ drawing.

Favourite album / podcast? I don't really listen to music when I'm working. I hear my own thoughts. I might talk aloud to the work to try and understand what it is telling me - I make notes about what I've got to draw next in case I forget. Generally, I like to just take in the sounds of life of what's going on or passing by - things like that and the birds.  A quiet life.

What does a typical day of making art look like for me? I get up very early. I mean I'm at the drawing board at about 6:30 in the morning. I'd like to get my best hours in, my best time for applying myself is about the first 3 or 4 hours of the day.

What do I remember about art in my childhood?

My mother was a children's writer and teacher. She always impressed on us the importance of books and reading. She always bought us lots of books. I remember Maurice Sendak's illustrations and The Happy Lion. In fact, while I have been working on this sunflower person on the back of my screen, I'm thinking of the Happy Lion. My very early childhood was in Sierra Leone where I was born and lived until the age of 5. I remember being taken to some kind of performance, a bit like a devil dance - people were on stage and when they turned sideways, they became paper-thin. I was terrified and started screaming so much that my mum had to take me out of there. When we came to Wigan, I don’t recall seeing much art. My mum encouraged my artistic endeavours from a very early age. She's in care now, but among her things, she still had these drawings I did when I was aged eight, a drawing  of a pheasant!  She used to encourage me and my sister to enter all these creative competitions. My number one fan.

I loved doing art at school. We moved around a lot.  I did Art 'O' and 'A' level. I didn't do an Art foundation immediately because I wanted to leave home and going off to study was a way to do that. I picked a subject at the back of the UCCA book with pin and it was Italian. I went to Leeds University to study Italian, dropped out after a year because it wasn't what I was interested in, stayed in Leeds, and ended up on foundation in the same year as Clio Barnard and Damien Hirst at Jacob Kramer. And that really was the best educational year that I'd ever had. Everybody says that. It was so good. We were taught to think about the world in different ways, challenge ourselves. It was a wonderful year.

Talk about confidence

If you enjoy making art. This is it. For me, this is the stuff I am most interested in doing - making art, exhibiting and talking about art. I absolutely love it.

I think age gives you more assurance and conviction. One of our poets we published in our first year (I am also founder of a poetry press) was Rabha Ashry who was the Brunel International African Poetry Prize winner in 2020, the year that I was also shortlisted. Her chapbook that we published was 'loving the alien'. Anyway, she has this amazing quote at the back; "my favourite verse of the Koran, roughly translated is a prayer imploring Allah, to ease my path —open up my chest, untie the knot of my tongue, so that I may be articulate." I find that really powerful. It also made me think about my more youthful interactions with people, when I didn't speak up and I felt very nervous about articulating my thoughts or talking about my art. So that verse struck a chord plus in Jericho Brown's The Tradition, he talks about a thread around the tongue. For me, there's a point in life where the tongue is unleashed - this is what happened. I lost that inarticulation. And that is a form of confidence.  You also realise that artmaking  is something you enjoy. Confidence is enjoyment, really. People detect the  joy in what you're talking about.

How did you first get started with visual art originally and over the years, how did that develop into the work you're doing now?

On my BA, I started off painting tapestried landscapes full of people dancing around. And I did etchings that were  kind of ‘exotic’ I  suppose —fictional worlds. Boschian. With black people in them. Then I got together with a fellow student Mowbray Odonkor at Wimbledon School of Art and we both decided that we wanted more black representation in the college – more input that could nurture our work.  We petitioned for artists Gavin Jantjies and then Eugene Palmer to come and give lectures to the BA. Everyone loved them. We also went out ourselves and we bumped into black women artists, the Thin Black Line crew, we bumped into Donald Rodney and everyone. Later, I lived amongst black women artists for a while in a Camden squat. People passed through. After leaving Wimbledon, my first 'proper' short doc film was about 5 young black artists made for the Arts Council's Black Arts Video Project. But back to  Wimbledon around 1985, me and Mowbray set up a black art student group, put posters up in the London art colleges, had our first meeting in my house in West Norwood with around 40 students from graphic design, fashion, fine art, everything. We cooked red, green and gold soup. We were united on certain issues —wanting more black representation/visibility in our studies. We held meetings at the Slade where Donald was studying.  Hereafter, our artwork, for both me and Mowbray’s became more political. I don't think it was indicative of the type of work that I'm doing now. It's a process on the journey that you go through as an artist in terms of finding who you are and what you are about and what your voice is. 

Large-scale drawing on brown paper started more or less as I finished Wimbledon School of Art. Red Riding Hood is dated 1987, the year I finished. That was probably the first time I bought brown paper.  I now work on pieces from a long 25m x 150cm roll of strong brown paper. Back then I was using smaller pieces.

I had an exhibition early on at the Bedford Hill Gallery. I also had a solo show. I made several pieces that re-imagine fairy tales. On the back wall of the Bedford Hill gallery, I had this wedding 'set up' drawing.  I took a photo of my mum and dad at their wedding in Edinburgh and did a drawing from that. My black, Sierra Leonean father, my white English mother. I put white cherubs on one side and black cherubs on the other, stretching out on either side. When I think back, it was a bit ‘on the nose’. But we had lots of conversations down the pub afterwards about this work. I've always been interested in the relationship of races to one another and hybridity and representation - in atypical ways.

Very soon after I graduated, I started a series of work called 'The Hum of History' on a very large scale – the first piece covered a whole wall of the bedsit I was living in East Dulwich. I completed part 1 and part 2. The first depicted Margaret Thatcher  as  a mummy. I talk more about this piece later. It was selected by Eddie Chambers for a touring exhibition; 'Plotting the course' at Camden Art Centre and was reviewed in the Financial Times with an image of the work. My piece became the ‘story’  of the show and this perhaps annoyed other artists because they probably didn't feel the work represented the ‘black’ issues and focus that they had. This is the older (wiser) me thinking back on my experience now. The 'Hum of History part 2' was an interior version of the first drawing and had this black couple lying on a bed. That was exhibited in the Black Art Gallery in Seven Sisters. It got people talking. Some thought I was being deliberately provocative, which wasn't my intention. I was exploring ideas, scenarios and people and found that it opened up conversations about sexuality, about consent maybe, long before it became mainstream to have these conversations.

So how did that develop into what you're doing now?

My recent series of 'research drawings' came out of my doctoral study into ways in which black poets respond to depictions of blackness in art. My study of ekphrasis (which means ‘describing art’) has allowed me to explore how the poets and artists explore similar ideas, but differently and about the conversation between the two forms - what the poet does and how it affects the reading of the artwork.

My perception of art changed. It is easy as an artist to bumble along, doing the same things and not really challenge yourself, except to say, 'I'm going work with a thicker chalk'. Rather than to do better or develop ideas. Research forces you to be more precise and get to the nub of things. I brought this thinking back to my art. When I re-approached my art, I had a whole array of subjects as well as a different approach to drawing.  I had looked at the poem 'The Wilde Woman of Aiken' by Robin Coste Lewis and at the photograph from 1882 by J A Palmer which had inspired her to write it. I felt that there was something that I needed to find out though exploring the crossover, creatively.  I did a small quick biro sketch of a series of face jugs with just sticks coming out of them and knew straight away that this was a step to a bigger work. I'd seen Keifer’s sunflowers and had other images on my head. You imbibe a lot of associated imagery when  writing or making work. 

                                            sketch for face jugs biro on card June 2023

That biro drawing led to my  'Face Jugs and Sunflowers’ piece which I think is one of my best works and represents a leap forward from the work I'd been doing years ago. I was less self-conscious, really striving to say something - but also there was something that I had garnered from my investigations into the meeting point between poetry and art and that was emerging. The weird frozen expressions on the jugs – the consciousness, the sense of history. That's what everybody says. I put my mother in there. I was trying to express the powerlessness you feel towards a mother in care.  You don't know whether she's aware - well I do think she is aware of our presence - but there is this general powerlessness about communicating.  These jugs have these incredible expressions, childlike and human and such a powerful presence. I drew an array of jugs and my mother was one of them. Peculiarly. So I did the drawing and it worked.

Face Jugs and Sunflowers, June 2023. 150 x 230cm charcoal, chalk pastel acrylic paint on brown paper

Prior to that I completed a much more ‘planned’ research drawing.  It was called 'Open Umbrella' taken from a line in a Gwendolyn Brooks poem 'Black is an open umbrella' . I drew the arc of a huge umbrella right cross the paper and inserted various black characters from other people's paintings and the history of art beneath. There are figures from Manao Tupapau by Gauguin, which I've made a film about, Rasha and Agosta are there and the horseback figure is straight from Noah’s Davis’ work. It garnered quite a lot of attention on Instagram – people liked the silver rain. It was a conversation between and about art histories.  So my research spawned a whole series of drawings.

I'm interested in narrative, because I'm interested in story and asking questions, rather than providing answers. The way I form a narrative, and this goes all the way back to the embalmed and mummified Margaret Thatcher piece back in 1980s, combines fictional and social narratives in this case about the Prime Minister and about monetarism. The subtitle 'Cash if you die, cash if you don't' an ad slogan of the time, crystalizes the ambiguity. I thought again about this work, when people sang 'the witch is dead' when Thatcher died in 2013.  She had had such a negative impact on people's lives. The picture imagined the moment of her death, when she was no longer powerful, yet all the things she'd wrought were still going on, swirling around. Some people dancing in the streets, one boy looking at a girl's knickers embroidered with £ signs. The angel figure standing over. A nurse, I used nurses almost as signifiers in these picture narratives.

      Scan of my image in Financial Times article, Jan 1989

Now my work is more esoteric - the ideas that I'm exploring  are about death, about aliveness. There’s that Boccaccio quote  ‘there is the plague outside and the storytellers inside’. For ‘outside’, read deaths and genocide, all the vileness of the world, pitted against which, artists are pretty powerless. Yet it seeps in, keeps seeping into all these drawings. I draw something that's quite beautiful - say like the sunflowers - but is also quite spooky, and quite disturbing.  And that is something that is not intentional but seems to be emanating from the work itself.

What does making art give you? 

It gives me pleasure for a start. It makes me happy. It gives me something to think about. It's a fight really. Sometimes you battle, you go there, you go back. See if is working or not working. Sometimes it works straight away and then it’s a joyous thing. Making art is a conversation, an ongoing conversation with all the other conversations that you've ever had in your whole life. Its connecting. It gives life meaning.

Where does your interest in spirits and myths come from and how do you incorporate this into your visual art?

This is an interesting question. I wouldn't say that I was interested in spirits and myths so much as spirituality and how it manifests through drawing, through the medium of drawing. Another definition of medium is transmission and channelling. That's what drawing is - the nature of it means that you're in touch with the muse, or the forces or the spirits. The process itself is a way in. I'm not interested in researching spirituality so much rather how it's applicable to my life. My friend, Georgina Grant, we are always talking about our shared hybrid pasts and West African origins and the way spirituality has manifested itself in our family or in certain events that have happened to us. I mentioned the paper-thin people turning sideways. There have been 'incidences' I would call them, throughout my life which I would say, are a product of some kind of intuiting knowledge or inherited memory. So I'm not that interested in mythology as research, I'm interested in it in a lived and living way. For instance - Face Jugs and Sunflowers. I learned that these jugs have been found along the routes of the Underground Railroad. Their use may well have been connected to the spiritual. I became fascinated by the frozen expressions and when I drew them, with the sunflowers coming out of them, that became something quite spiritful or ghostly. This came from the drawing.  So that's my exploration. This is where drawing provides the answers. Answers that the academic research doesn’t – answers that lie in the meeting point between the poem and the art. That's where my interest lies.

How has the art scene changed for you over the years?

There’s been huge change.  I was active in the second wave of the Black Arts Movement in the 80s. There wasn't the level of discussion or acknowledgement or visibility of black artists then. There hadn't yet been the moment that changed everything. Now, there’s  more knowledge across the board. There's also much more evidence of black art exhibitions. Back then,  everything black art had this 'community' label or was considered 'marginal'. Galleries were small or on the fringes: Black Art gallery, Bedford Hill, Brixton Art Gallery.  Now there are black art exhibitions of different types and genres. They're all completely different from one another. Then you will find black artists among other shows as well. Come October, there’s the 1:54. A number of galleries plus new galleries popping up. It's a two-way process of visibility, knowledge, exchange, change in the ethos, everything - that's been a gradual shift in my lifetime - which is only a good thing.

Moving on to recent group shows. There's a point in your life where you want to take a step up. You don't want the same things. Nobody wants the same things for ever. The first recent exhibition was Bloom Song.  It was a route in to exhibiting again and lovely to exhibit in such a great space. The second exhibition was Gloam. There was such a strong bond between our two different artworks when it was up.  It was an interesting exercise. There’s more in the pipeline.

Getting back into exhibiting – it is a very different arena now. Whereas in the black art days, there was an element of putting on a big exhibition and maybe getting it reviewed (preferably not by Brian Sewell) But sales? They were not part of the equation whatsoever. I don't think anybody was money-minded.

One final question - What's next for you?

Taking my art to the next level. I’ll leave you with this recent drawing after Paula Rego’s The Mermaid

Dreamery (after Rego’s The Mermaid) chalk pastel, oil stick and pencil on brown paper, 2025

Amanda Holiday, June 2025