If you are familiar with this artist, you might imagine my difficulty in choosing just one of his pieces for this writing. Amoako Boafo is a profound and prolific current art talent taking on the Black experience in fingerpaint and paper. Amoako was born in Accra, Ghana, in 1984. There he learned of the life and work of W.E.B. DuBois who was buried there in 1965. Dubois’ writings on the “double consciousness” and the “othered” perspective of Black life seem to have pointed this artist to his subjective portraits filled with gaze and metaphor.

Amoako paints himself, his friends and those he admires with a counter-intuitive directness and dissonance. He pulls us closer to that which we cannot truly know with contrast, fashion, and posed confidence. He seems to dare us to look away from all that is painted across these faces.

In this portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), Amoako Boafo seems to show us the amorphous double frame of racism. Basquiat, a young and famous New York City art talent, lived a life far from buttoned down and far too short. In this work, his eyes seem to pose our challenge. How do we make amends for wrongs that linger and harm generation after generation? Though we can never adequately trace or acknowledge this seminal pain, maybe our first step and our prayer is to not look away. Amen.

In gratitude, faith and hope,

Sandy Prouty
Minister of Children and Families
Montview Church