Oil on Canvas I did this one back in college. To most, you see a path through rows of corn, and yes that is all that I intended for anyone to see; in fact beyond that I am completely satisfied with everyone taking away their own ideas, memories, connotations from this painting. However, with this painting and a number of others painted around this time, I was thinking about the African-American agricultural history (particularly my own ancestry) and through the title I tied that with another tradition and history of braiding hair in cornrows. Cornrows, the hairstyle, have been around since forever, predating the African American experience, beginning in Africa, but they now have a hip-hop influenced popularity. But you can imagine whoever first named the style did so at a time when rows of corn were inextricably tied to everyday life, controlling, through the success of a year's harvest, one's livelihood.
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