Araba Opoku

Opoku’s art is not concerned only with suffering and anguish. Her commentaries on the water crisis also capture the freedom, joy, and abundance that water signifies, represented by graceful flows of paint and plethora of colour. Opoku begins each painting by creating a digital image of her vision, which allows her to experiment with colour and form. This vision is then transferred to canvas. Her artistic process mirrors the effect of water, as she washes canvases with flowing brushstrokes and watery acrylic paint. Paint is allowed to drip naturally, mimicking the uninhabited nature of water. In contrast, Opoku employs curved grid lines to restrain this movement of paint, symbolising the human attempt to control water supplies. The end result of thickly-layered paint and gracefully warped subjects represents water as both life-giving and an enduring source of uncertainty and suffering. Her paintings in general reference her immediate environment by representing specific streets, home gardens, and daily scenes in the community she lives in. The subtlety and precision of her art allows her to speak to the fullness of life as well its decay.