Ovation TV

I call my style 'Anthropomorphic Perception: An exercise in Ultra-Perceptive Plausible Juxtaposition.' It entails a quest to depict the human form by plausibly and strategically juxtaposing commonplace objects to create an alternative reality. My objective is to show a visible parallel universe within any image that I behold. The use of inanimate objects to represent the human form is reminiscent of the cruel and reductive equation that slavery imposed on my African ancestors, transforming them into merchandise to be bought and sold, in the eyes of their slave-masters. However, the influence of European artists is not lost in my endeavor, because my inspiration was derived from Leonardo da Vinci's suggestion which said that "the artist may enhance his faculties for creative invention by staring at a stain on the wall and therein perceive whatever he wishes to see." I have used this technique to discover what I call ' mnemonic images' (objects that my mind's eye perceives within any observed image and they are reminiscent of aspects of my personal life story) in the images that inspire me.

Mnemonic images are the component parts of my creations, which I discover when I scrutinize the contours of a source image. They frequently have personal significance in my life. The ubiquitous 'hand of bananas' is a deferential reference to the "hand that fed me" which is the hand of my late father, Mr. Henzie A. Wilson, who worked for seventeen of my formative years within the Banana Industry in my native Commonwealth of Dominica. The boats in every painting were his working capital after he left the Banana Industry in 1969. The mountains which frequently double as eyebrows are located in my hometown of Portsmouth, where I first observed my parents sweat from their brow trying to raise us in a decent nuclear family environment. That recurrent bay with boats moored therein is Portsmouth and it represents my mother's face, because it was in that town that my mother first stimulated my imagination towards the perception of visual puns. The inconspicuous 'Y' that simulates a woman's décolletage etched on vases and which represents a woman's accentuated breasts are a referencial tribute to those on which I have laid my head for the past twenty-eight years - Y for Yvonne's. Every nude, whether she be in the form of fruits and vegetables (nutritious and delectable) or a table or an apparition between trees is none other than my muse whose sinuous contours beguiled me one Sunday morning in February 1978. My eyes have not receded into their sockets since.