Happy Birthday Frida!

Frida Kahlo Bradley Theodore

Frida Kahlo

Oil Painting

©2016 Bradley Theodore.

Sourced: Maddox Gallery, London, England.

https://www.instagram.com/maddoxgallery/

Bradley Theodore.

https://www.instagram.com/bradleytheodore/

et moi!:

https://www.instagram.com/arvin_da_brgha/

Happy birthday Shaman!  Gosh I love Bradley Theodore’s passionate attack!

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©2013-2025 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.  

The Teacher.

The Teacher 2004 Oil on Canvas

The Teacher.  

Oil on Canvas

©2004 Wim Heldens.

Provenance:  Private Collection New York City.

http://www.wimheldens.com/

This was Wim’s first painting of Ariq Robinson his lover…  truly glorious.

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©2013-2025 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

Miles Ahead!

Miles Davis 2

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Miles Davis

Davis III, Miles Dewey 26/5/26 <0> 28/9/91  Tiger 8.4.4 = 7

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I am so looking forward to the opening of Don Cheadle’s Miles Ahead this week.  i think of any other Jazz artist, Miles is the only one whose every album, on listening to it, I conclude is a favourite.  This creative genius just oozed authenticity.  Of course, a major part of his outréness and originality had to do with his having been an actual old soul.

I have always been partial to him as he was briefly married to Cicely Tyson who was a maternal first cousin of my late mother’s who in her youth did play the cornet.  Of course, Cicely Tyson, who is still going strong and currently starring on Broadway, is an entity mate of Miles Davis’.

My creatively gifted mother whose songs are published in the hymnal of the now Wesleyan Church was a remarkable woman who was pure intellect and a source of fierce pride.  She whose paternal grandparents were Sephardi from the small Brazilian community which settled in Nevis.   Indeed, she who is now reincarnated in London, England, male and first-born and about whom I have dreamt – East Indian/Caucasian heritage in this lifetime and currently aged 13 years old.

Sadly, none of my dream encounters with Miles Davis were ever audiocassette-recorded as they were never had during the decade when I did so – 1989 to 1998.  Each of those dream encounters did, though, validate his agedness of spirit and he seemed every bit an old soul during astral plane encounters.

In anticipation of this long overdue film – imagine that, the paucity of Jazz biopics when so clearly Jazz is rooted in Klezmer!  More than that, on to the matter of saluting a true original, a true creative genius and a giant of Black high art.

*Sadly, I have spent the last couple of weeks trying to track down the title of the Miles Davis painting herein featured; alas, to no avail have I managed to have discovered its title et al.

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Birth of the Cool, 1957.

Kind of Blue 1959.

– This is the music (Kind of Blue) I am mostly likely to listen to, after having audiocassette-recorded the dreams, on awaking from a flying dream.  This music is about finding centre whilst simultaneously remaining aloft in the realms of the flying dream.  As West Indians would say, it’s sweet!

Milestones, 1958.

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©2013-2025 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

#OscarsSoWhite!

By far, one of the funniest Academy Awards Opening monologues.  Leading up to last night’s awards, I was a bit apprehensive about how the whole race row would pan out.  I think that Chris Rock did a fantastic job and steered the entire controversy in the appropriate direction.

The beauty of the monologue in 1999 is how pure and wonderful it was.  So much has transpired since then and we are all a very different human race post 9/11, post Barack H. Obama’s presidency – racism has become since then so in-your-face and toxic… most of all, the problem of climate change is undeniably upon us.  So very good of Leonardo DiCaprio to have spoken so eloquently as he did.

Finally, regardless the diversity controversy in Hollywood and the facts being what they are, it matters little when this beautiful world is slowly becoming less viable for human civilisation…  Merrily we besottedly chug along like dopey lobsters denying that it is getting tepid under the collar.

Finally, Whoopi and her opening monologue got it right, it was the best #OscarsSoWhite! ever.

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©2013-2025  Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

Beyoncé Slays!

Beyonce

Just as powerful as Michael Jackson releasing “Remember The Time” during Black History Month in 1992 so, too, Beyoncé slays by dropping Formation during Black History Month and on Bob Nesta Marley’s birthday no less.  Love it…  Love her!

Happy Black History Month!

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©2013-2025 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

In Remembrance: Hugh Steers.

Breathing 1987

Breathing

Oil on Paper

11 x 15 in

1987 Hugh Steers

Provenance: Estate of Hugh Steers

Signature 1991

Signature

Oil on Canvas

66 x 56 in

1991 Hugh Steers

Provenance: Estate of Hugh Steers

Sick Room Hugh Steers 1990

Sick Room

Oil on Canvas

38.12 x 40

1990 Hugh Steers

Provenance: Estate of Hugh Steers

Hugh Steers Self Portrait 1987

Self-Portrait 

Charcoal and Watercolour on Paper

30 x 22 in

1987 Hugh Steers

Provenance: Estate of Hugh Steers.

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I have always loved the works of this young American Brahmin artist who was felled by AIDS – far too soon.  He was, of course, related by marriage to two of the most iconic Americans – at least for me – of the 20th Century: Gore Vidal (whose Michael Overleaves are to be found on the Michael Overleaves Appendix page) and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis – both of whom were king souls.

I remember… this World Aids Day, 2015

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© 2013-2025 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

Sick Room.

Sick Room Hugh Steers 1990

Oil on Canvas

38.1 x 40.0 Inches

© 1990, Hugh Steers

Provenance: Estate of Hugh Steers.

One of the most poignant AIDS-related paintings of the last century.  Truly moving.

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© 2013-2025 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

Oreo.

Oreo

Acrylic on Canvas

126 x 100.5 cm

© 1988 Jean-Michel Basquiat

Provenance:  Private Collection as of 2005.

One of my favourite pieces in the current Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition at the AGO.  The reviewers in both the Globe and Mail and NOW magazine haven’t a fucking clue what they are talking about; certainly, in the case of the latter it is the sort of sly invidiousness that one can ever expect of Canadians in their cool animus towards Blacks and the Black artistic aesthetic.  Later for the likes of sphinctered, snow-driven dreck comme lui…

Of course, all that glorious fecund green serves as a good enough reason to say, Happy St. Patrick’s Day.  As James Joyce so deftly illustrated, we are all Irish for being possessed of imagination… we are all dreamers – I certainly am.  I love you more!

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© 2013-2025 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

Exu.

Exu 1988

Acrylic, Oil Stick on Canvas

199.3 x 254 cm

© 1988 Jean-Michel Basquiat

Provenance: Private collection

Today, I shall see this show for the fifth time.

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© 2013-2025 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.