Richard Yarde's Mojo Blues Available to Purchase

In 1995 Richard Yarde (1939–2011) made a significant shift in the content of his large-scale watercolor drawings, which for the preceding three decades were reflections on the cultural and political history of the twentieth-century diasporic African experience. He had painted culturally resonant subjects as diverse as Universal Negro Improvement Association leader Marcus Garvey on parade in Harlem and made a life-size installation of dancers cavorting at the Savoy Ballroom as a part of a continuous body of work that celebrated a tangible image world that was lived and experienced, both firsthand and through popular culture. This essay chronicles the artist's life and examines how, after a diagnosis of kidney disease, he began to engage with mysticism and the spiritual worlds of the African diaspora.