Untitled

Dynamic, abstract colorful shapes and patterns animate this painting. The central vertical image is meant to evoke a dancer in ceremonial garb, masked at the top and in transformation. Ellsworth Ausby considered paintings such as this to represent ancestral spirits, riffing on the language of modern art but also costume and mask traditions of different African peoples. Ausby wrote of his desire through his paintings to “mirror the dynamo of our antecedent heritage despite the temerarious and presumptuous canons of the established art world.”