Hands of Practice continues my Meta Abfillage series, where I revisit earlier figurative paintings and layer them with collage and abstraction to explore how memory and survival overlap. Beneath the surface lies a portrait of my close relative, a makeup artist immersed in her work , a quiet moment of focus, care, and skill. The scene originally celebrated the dignity of practice: the steady rhythm of learning, creating, and refining one’s craft.
In 2025, I returned to this canvas and reimagined it through collage, layering fragments of newspaper and painted cassava motifs, symbols of sustenance and endurance. The cassava becomes a second body across the surface, merging with the figure’s gestures to suggest a dialogue between creative labour and the everyday realities that sustain it.
Hands of Practice transforms an intimate act into a broader reflection on resilience. It celebrates the unseen dedication that keeps both individuals and communities alive, the hands that work, create, and nurture, even in quiet corners. Through Meta Abfillage, this painting becomes a layered memory: of skill, of survival, and of the quiet persistence that shapes every act of making.
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