The surreal undertones in colour and mark-making in this painting suggested something undercurrent, heated. A central shape, a tree like form cuts the composition in three, with two horizontal bars suggesting a canopy? and in the foreground littered chunks of weighted colour. I have been fortunate enough to have seen Nina Simone in the intimate setting at Ronnie Scotts in London back in the 8O’s ,( an extraordinary pianist, and yes she did sing ‘ Young gifted and black’), Ella in the Albert Hall and one of the very first jazz albums I bought was by Billie Holiday and her orchestra.
It”s important to say that titles always come after the making of work or very close towards the end of finishing a painting.
“Strange Fruit” is a song written and composed by Abel Meeropol (under his pseudonym Lewis Allan) and recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. The lyrics were drawn from a poem by Meeropol published in 1937. The song protests the lynching of Black Americans with lyrics that compare the victims to the fruit of trees. Such lynchings had reached a peak in the Southern United States at the turn of the 20th century and the great majority of victims were black. The song has been called “a declaration” and “the beginning of the civil rights movement”. Meeropol set his lyrics to music with his wife and the singer Laura Duncan and performed it as a protest song in New York City venues in the late 1930s, including Madison Square Garden. ( source) Wikipedia.
