Gullah Images: The Art of Jonathan Green
By Jonathan Green and Pat Conroy
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About this ebook
Paintings, magisterial and universal, that capture the essence of a vibrant African American community
In his art Jonathan Green paints the world of his childhood and an ode to a people imbued with a profound respect for the dignity and value of others—the Gullah people of the South Carolina barrier islands. His canvases, beloved for their sense of jubilation and rediscovery, evoke the meaning of community in Gullah society and display a reverence for the rich visual, oral, and spiritual traditions of its culture. His art also reveals a keen awareness of the interpersonal, social, and natural environments in which we live.
The 180 images assembled in this collection showcase the meaning, purpose, and beauty that Green finds in the small but critical tasks of life. His work elevates the everyday—preparing morning meals, doing the wash, accomplishing farming chores, finishing a day's work, relaxing in the evening—and celebrates the social and religious—community dances, baptisms, weddings, funerals. Green allows his audience the space and silence to observe people unobtrusively as they pursue life's mission of labor, love, and belonging and as they work in harmony with nature's mysterious, ever changing fabric.
While Green's paintings speak specifically to his own upbringing, they transcend racial, cultural, and ethnic boundaries, thus allowing individuals of all backgrounds to recall fond memories and to reflect on the place that purpose and dignity hold in their lives.
In addition to a foreword by Pat Conroy, essays by Bettye J. (Mbitha) Parker Smith, Lynn Robertson, and Ronne Hartfield complement Green's images. They tell of the vitality of the Gullah community, the progression of Green's career, and the authenticity of his work.
Jonathan Green
JONATHAN GREEN is an award-winning writer of speculative fiction with more than eighty books to his name. He has written everything from Fighting Fantasy gamebooks to Doctor Who novels, by way of Sonic the Hedgehog, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Judge Dredd. He is the creator of the Pax Britannia steampunk series for Abaddon Books, and the author of the critically-acclaimed, YOU ARE THE HERO – A History of Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks.
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Reviews for Gullah Images
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Gullah Images - Jonathan Green
JONATHAN GREEN IN MOTION
Gullah Anointed
Bettye J. (Mbitha) Parker Smith
Each bristle of Jonathan Green’s paintbrush seems tempered by an ancestral presence that has been marinating for centuries in Gold Coast West African liquidity. When he walks to face his canvas, Jonathan Green does not make the trek alone. Surrounded by oscillating echoes of things past, he is clairvoyant and prescriptive. He gives honor to a higher force; one of his familiar. Each brush stroke responds to the residual sounds of Congo drums beating delicately against the lowering Daufuski sunset. Enveloped in mystery and history, how often has he responded to the whispered advice of the Mandingo warrior on the mixing of purples and oranges and blues? What about, one may wonder, the swaying of women’s hips that are laid to rest on Jonathan’s vibrating canvas—over and over again? Is it the presence of the Tshi elder who ensures his exactness of motion; who steals his privacy in the middle of the night and guides the hip-swaying moves which are present in the formula of this young artist? Where else did he secure the patent on his vivid display of hands-on-hips,
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