Notebooks

Notebooks began as a series of drawings that each depict a solitary black woman viewed in profile while concentrating on the screen of a mobile phone, laptop or tablet computer.

Each imaginary figure is delineated by a fine graphite line with watercolour and inks describing skin tones and hair. The figure is portrayed in full, wearing contemporary dress and without cropping of the body. Excepting chairs and stools for seated figures, the women are the only forms within the frame, leaving most of the picture surface blank. As the series has evolved, later works have featured groups of 2 or 3 figures including children and men.

Kimathi Donkor: Notebooks won the Delonghi Project Artist Award at the London Art Fair in 2019 and works from the series have been shown at exhibitions including Play, Rest, Work at University College London Hospital in 2022 and Kimathi Donkor: Notebooks at Brixton Library, London in 2021.

Works from the series are held in private collections internationally.