Baking Cassava At The Yellow House
$38.00
Baking Cassava At The Yellow House
Limited Edition Giclee Print By Jill Tattersall 12" x 8"
This painting was inspired by the yellow house on Anegada. There was a large empty space in front which I wanted to fill with some complex activity, and I remembered seeing women on that island pounding something which I took to be cassava roots (in fact it was Guinea corn, profusely grown there at that time). The women I saw in 1965 were cheerful as they tirelessly mashed the corn in a hollowed out tree stump. That picture stayed in my mind because they had a small battery radio balanced on the rim of the tree trunk and I loved the juxtaposition of the old and the new.
Though based on a misunderstanding, I have taken artistic license to honour generations of hard-working cassava bakers of our other islands by showing them at various stages of the process, originally learned from the island Indians. The rounds of cassava bread are being dried on tree branches while the family matriarch oversees the process, and everyone is too busy to notice the flamingos flying overhead.