Late afternoon on the harbour, and the wind is coming off the water hard enough to take her braids with it.
She’s in profile. Behind her, the Staten Island ferry, drawn simple, sitting on a flat two-colour ground. Her braids run out sideways, held horizontal by the wind – and they don’t stop being braids. They keep going, into magenta and cobalt and gold and emerald, until the whole of the air around her head is blooming.
The thing you notice second
Follow that line twice. The first time your eye reads hair. The second time it reads weather. Naomi grows the colour out of the figure – out of the braids themselves, never scattered around the edges to fill space. That’s why the wind feels real in a picture where nothing else is.
And she never gives you the face. Turned away, held inside a thick black outline, deep warm skin. She won’t make her pose for you, and she still won’t tell you her name.
What it does to a room
Rooms with this in them feel braver. It’s the one people clock from the doorway, before they’ve taken their coat off. A first-apartment wall, a hallway you walk past ten times a day, a gift for a sister who likes being the loudest colour in the room.
Getting it up
Canvas with a visible weave, stretched over solid wood an inch and a quarter deep, with the image running round the sides so it looks finished from every angle. It arrives ready to hang – one nail, two minutes, no frame to buy and no bill you weren’t expecting. Matte, so a window opposite hands you the colour back instead of your own lamp.
The 24 x 18 (61 x 46 cm) is the one most walls want, at $149. Smaller corner, take the 16 x 12 at $129. Wide wall, the 32 x 24 at $229. A high quality print of a digital artwork, made for you when you order, then shipped free anywhere in the continental US.
One honest thing
It is loud. If you like your walls quiet and grey, this will fight you all week. If you want a room that feels like a good day, take it home – or go see the rest of Naomi’s blooms, and follow her, so the next one lands in front of you first.
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