What I Was Given to Carry - Painting

Description

A deep umber field holds a heavy horizontal form suspended above a narrow vertical support.
The edges of both shapes are softened by erosion.
Within the mass rests a small warm gold form, embedded and intact.

Explanation

This work is about inheritance - not what we choose, but what is placed upon us.

The weight does not fall.
The bearer does not collapse.
The small golden form suggests that within what we carry, something meaningful was entrusted to us.

This is not a painting about suffering.
It is a painting about continuation.

Origins / History

Across African histories, responsibility is often transmitted through labor, land, name, or memory rather than instruction.
What is carried is not explained - it is lived.

The abstraction of weight and support follows European modernist monumentality, reducing narrative into structure.

The emotional reading resonates with American diasporic experience:
carrying history, expectation, and meaning forward without always being told how.

Story / Opening

The artwork does not specify what the burden is.

For some, it will be ancestry.
For others, family.
For others, duty, memory, or survival itself.

Dimensions:

48 × 72 inches (framed)
This piece must feel physically heavy in the room.

Interpretation / Viewer Invitation

This work does not name the burden.

It does not explain how it arrived,
or whether it was chosen, inherited, or imposed.

The heavy form remains suspended - carried, not dropped.
The narrow support beneath it does not bend,
but it does not dominate either.

The small golden mark embedded in the weight is not decoration.
It is meaning placed inside responsibility.

For some viewers, this piece will speak of ancestry.
For others, of family, duty, memory, or survival.
For others still, it may reflect the quiet realization that what they carry has shaped them more than they knew.

The work does not ask you to put the weight down.
It asks you to notice how you have carried it.

The work asks quietly:

What were you given to carry - and what has it made of you?

What's Included

• Framed, archival-quality fine art print
• Title printed beneath the artwork in elegant serif
• Certificate of Authenticity
• Collector’s companion card (with artist statement + story)
• Ready-to-hang with gallery hardware
• Optional: Limited Edition Collector Number (if chosen)