Fresh Paint
Esiri Erheriene-Essi
There’s a wonderful nostalgia to the paintings of Esiri Erheriene-Essi. She scours everything from flea markets to museum archives for her source material, as she searches for “something very specific that captures my attention and activates my imagination”.
Her interest in harnessing the power of history stems back to her BA in Media Studies at the University of East London, reading the essays of James Baldwin. “He talked a lot about history and how reading the words of others that had come before him made him feel less alone and I guess that always stayed with me,” she says. Her focus is on imagery from the African diaspora and her aim is to “not just to
