Light as a Feather

Name: Light as a Feather
Brand: Raknida
Price: 45.0 USD
Availability: InStock

Toni Kuyinu

Grey-toned portrait of a girl with two afro puffs holding a white feather vertically over half her face, eyes closed, a gold ring around one eye and gold marks on her lip and shoulders.

$45.00 – $110.00

A girl with two soft puffs of hair holds a white feather to her face, eyes closed, a ring of gold around one eye. It is Toni Kuyinu's portrait of a private moment.

Light as a Feather is a Studio Edition: 20 museum-quality art prints in each size, each numbered in its white border. Every artwork comes with its Cultural Passport.

The Cultural Passport

Every order comes with the heritage documented.

Digital, emailed when your order ships: the work's story, the tradition it draws on and how it was made. 5 × 7 in (13 × 18 cm), ready to print and frame beside the work.

How it works →

Toni Kuyinu's own note for this work is one plain line: a girl holding a feather to her face while her eyes are closed. Everything else is in how he paints it. She wears her hair in two soft puffs, her skin is modelled in the charcoal greys of all his portraits. A single white feather stands upright across her face, dividing it in two.

Gold, as always in his work, is the only warmth: a ring around one closed eye, a touch on the lip. There are small marks along the shoulders, the same marks that repeat across Crown, Kingdom and Queendom. In those works the gold sits on royalty. Here it sits on a girl in a private moment, and the title reads like a wish for her. Look at the feather against her cheek and notice how lightly she holds it.

Motifs in this work

The white feather: lightness held close

The gold ring around the eye: his mark of honour, on an everyday face

Charcoal greys: the palette that lets the gold glow

Edition: Edition of 20 in each size · 60 across all sizes. Further runs possible once a size sells out, each tagged (Run 2). Edition numbers count the works sold through Raknida; the artist may also sell their own editions of this work.
Numbering: Number, title and artist printed in the white border.
Printing: Museum-quality giclée with archival pigment inks on museum-grade cotton fine art paper.
Includes: Your numbered artwork and its Cultural Passport.

Size	Sheet	Image	Museum-Quality Print only	Framed	Available
S	8 × 10 in	6½ × 8¼ in	$45	+$65	20
M	16 × 20 in	14 × 17½ in	$75	+$119	20
L	24 × 30 in	22 × 27½ in	$110	+$179	20

The artist

Toni Kuyinu

Yoruba · Toronto, Canada · 4 works on Raknida

Toni Kuyinu is a Toronto-based artist who paints young Black faces in soft greys and lets gold do the rest. His three works on Raknida, Crown, Kingdom and Queendom, were painted to hang together. They show a king in profile, a queen in profile, and between them a crowned young man who faces us with his eyes closed. The skin is modelled in charcoal tones and the metal is the only warm colour. Small gold marks repeat from face to face, beneath an eye, across a lip, so the three read as one household.

View full profile →All 4 works →