The First Last, The Last First

This woman works a 12 hour night shift as a security guard. I painted her in the staff kitchen under florescent lighting at about 9pm one night. We had to be out of the way of cameras that check to see that the guards are not asleep. We had to work quickly, but that turned out not to be my biggest challenge. Ayanda couldn’t sit still - at all - she’d chuckle, chat, fix her clothes, look through the door then turn her head to the window, check her phone, stand up, stretch her legs. Which was a good thing for a guard on night shift, since she’d arrived at 6pm and would to be on duty til 6am the following morning., but was very unconducive to a live portrait. I tried to capture a sense of the light changes over time in the painting, but the push and pull of the sky in pinks left me rendering it in the most contrasting terms - absorbing mignight blue and the white that follows an African sunrise. I couldn’t complete the portrait with her in front of me, so for the few moments she was still I took a few photographs and packed up by board and paints. It took me another 4 months to complete the painting, and I would try to soak in a good look at her as I drove through the gate where she was on duty. She is so gorgeous and the interior of her shack is covered with bright yellow and the outside with green. She was wearing a pale blue uniform on the night, but she was bursting outside of herself and praising the Lord and so I dressed her in yellow.  The First Last, The Last First is a saying of Jesus.