Got Fruit? (New Painting African style) – memories for Mother’s Dayan

This is the painting I gave to my mother for Mother’s Day.

It is a shared memory of going to the market in Monrovia, Liberia.  These powerful, queenly women, always danced in front of the store, selling fruit from their baskets.  If you bought some, they would sing a Christian hymn.   My mother always bought our fruit from them.  If you bought fruit inside the store, it cost a lot more, and there were always tarantulas hiding in the banana clusters.  Buying from these women was safer, cheaper and the right thing to do!  Mr. Abu-Jadi did not mind.  I think I remember someone saying that he even stopped selling fruit so that these women could make their living properly.

Painting this, I cried the whole through and did not need water for the acrylic.  My tears mixed with the paint.  These women would also sometimes babysit me, when my mother was shopping, for money.  My mother, a very generous woman would pay each of them, $10 for an hour.  In the sixties, in Liberia, this was a fortune, and it allowed these women to take “vacations”.    They were always so kind to me, and would cradle me, each in turn, while my mom shopped.  They also didn’t let anyone pick on me for being a very conspicuously white child, in an African universe.  They loved me and taught me acceptance of other human beings.  And I love them.  Their names are:

(from left to right)

Jahnjay, Tarday, and Tomah.

To this day, these women have exemplified the word "Queen" for me. Their crowns are the most beautiful of all. Acrylic on canvas. 8x10

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