A Delightful Afternoon

A Delightful Afternoon is a acrylic marker based painting that was created as a tribute to the artists John James Audubon, Yayoi Kusama, and Henri Matisse. Using the elements, concepts, and ideology of the three artists, I created my own interpretation of their works while combining my art style and practice into it. Audubon’s influence appears in the natural elements of this piece. He often stages his subjects with intention, presenting carefully ranged imagery that consists of birds and branches.

Inspired by Kusama’s use of obsessive repetition, I mainly took inspiration from the pattern. I treated the patterning as a discipline, while adding my own twist to some of her more simple line designs. Inspired by Matisses’s organic linework, I created brushstrokes that followed the same stroke while incorporating my signature linework. The steady repeated markers give the art piece a sense of control and intensity, as if the artwork is built through ritual. By using a bold solid bright red colour throughout the entire drawing, viewers should feel a sense of liveliness and confidence paired with the warm hued background. I chose acrylic markers as my main medium due to their ability to be bold and crisp in imagery, giving it a graphic feeling.

As artists, we are constantly gathering inspiration from other artists that came before us, the inspirational source may be either a conscious choice, or an unconscious one. A Delightful Afternoon strives to make viewers consider where influence ends and originality begins, and how we decide what counts as acceptable borrowing versus meaningful transformation. Ultimately, A Delightful Afternoon asks viewers to consider how art history lives inside contemporary work, and how taking inspiration from their works can become transformation.

This project was made possible with support from the Frank-Ratchye Further Fund Microgrant #2026-040.