Leo Twiggs, Extended Family Portrait, 1984

Image Description: Batik portrait of a man's side profile in a sitting position. The man's upper body is encased in a blue, orang, pink, and yellow square. 

Narrative: Leo Twiggs (b. 1934) was born in St. Stephen, SC and is known for using batik in his works, which can be seen in this work, Extended Family Portrait. Batik is a wax resist dyeing technique wherein an artist applies wax to parts of cloth (mostly cotton) to prevent the dye from seeping in, dyes the cloth, and then boils off the wax.

In his own words: "Every artist must create out of his own being, out of the result of his own encounter with the world. I was born in the south and needless to say, the things I remembered, the scents, the atmosphere, all acted to shape the imagery I use in my paintings… I wanted to get a feeling in my work. We ere always poor folks and I remember there was always a kind of dinginess, a kind of “oldness,” of not having the new, but there was always a dignity in it all. Soon I came to realize that the struggle we has was the basic struggle of mankind— we were not alone.”