Ocean Blessed Family 2009

Twins Seven Seven’s ‘Ocean Blessed Family’ is a work on canvas, alive with figuration, pattern and vibrant colour. I can only imagine the artist making this, starting perhaps with an initial sketch and then building up the layers of detail, one line at a time. The figures are otherworldly, their almond eyes turned upwards, elongated necks and limbs adorned with intricate patterns. I wonder if Twins Seven Seven was thinking about community, about ancestry, and about the connection between generations. The family almost seems to emerge from the forest itself, a mass of tightly packed plant life that threatens to consume the pictorial space. There are echoes of Yoruba mythology and spirituality throughout Twins Seven Seven’s oeuvre. He developed his own visual language, drawing on dreams, visions, and Yoruba folklore, as part of a larger conversation with artists from across time, inspiring new ways of seeing and understanding the world.