I want my paintings to give a voice to the poor, abused and invisible. I wanted to create a hyperrealism painting showing the children in Africa who are risking their lives in dark and dangerous diamond mines. I wanted every part of the canvas to shout and scream at this crime against the children. I want to paint the truth and I want people to see it.
Because children are considered an easy source of cheap labour, they are regularly employed in the diamond mining industry. One survey of diamond miners in the Lunda Norte province of Angola found that 46% of miners were between the ages of 5 and 16.
For children trapped in the diamond mines, life is full of hardship. Children work long days, often six or seven days a week. Compared with adults, they are even more vulnerable to injuries and accidents. Physically challenging tasks such as digging with heavy shovels or carrying bags of gravel can leave them hurt or in pain. Because of their small size, children also may be asked to perform the most dangerous activities such as entering narrow mine shafts or descending into pits where landslides may claim their lives.
Many child miners do not attend school. As adults, these children often will have little choice but to continue working as miners. Child labour thereby condemns many children to a lifetime in the mines, robbing them as well as their countries of a brighter future.
When creating this art work I knew I had to start with the child’s face. I had to create that look, that despair, that hopelessness. Once I felt that I had got the expression as I wanted I then painted the diamonds in the background. In the white squares I painted a running total of the number of child deaths in these mines.
This is a painting of beauty but it demands you to look deeper and to keep looking.
