By Nii B. Andrews.
The Liberian born artist, Johnson Weree, produces enigmatic, colorful, full face on heads or busts of men and women.
The paintings are executed with ball point pens of different colors with the ink applied in multiple layers; Weree also uses gel pens, crayons and pastels.
Multiple geometric shapes are utilised to form the faces – trapezoid, ellipses, almonds and lozenges may form the eyes and mouth.
The result is a painting with a face rendered in a cubist or angular form; a sculptural idiom.
Middle-aged men and women are commonly featured with well styled coiffures sporting prominent hair parts.
Weree’s paintings look mysterious; the direct stares of the busts invite us to contemplate the breadth, depth and complexity of the human condition.
His artistic practice started in his homeland during the civil war.
He has since moved to the Netherlands and his work has been exhibited in Rotterdam and Stockholm.
