Lola Lonli: Igbo lovers wedding

Located in a private collection

This is one of my early paintings, painted in egg tempera technique. For paints, I used an old Russian recipe, which was also used in icon painting. Having slightly changed the recipe, I added essential oils specific for each color, thus achieving greater brightness of the colors.

It was especially interesting for me to paint with bright blue over orange, painting the sky without the layers penetrating. I wanted to convey the vibration of hot air, to enhance the atmosphere of tension of the moment.

The plot of this picture is taken from the book of the remarkable Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe "God's Arrow". The picture shows the wedding ceremony of the Igbo people.

While relatives and guests drink to the health of the young and overeat with wedding treats, the bride and groom, accompanied by the mother of the groom and the sorcerer, go to the crossroads of two roads, where they bury a simple sacrifice: cola nuts, cowrie shells and yam tuber.

After that, the place of sacrifice is sprinkled with palm wine and blood of a chicken, the sorcerer dances around the young and sings spells, blessing the new family.

Earlier, when sorcerers were more honest, it was customary to bury a chicken, but in our spoiled age, chicken and wine, as a rule, go to the sorcerer.

To conclude this article, I would like to wish that more books by African writers and poets were published in Russian.

We really need such books that inspire creativity and travel, the study of ethnography and anthropology, as well as foreign languages ​​and much more.