A red reminiscent of Pompeian murals, a dark, earthen shade, often recurs. It suggests terrible mysteries, blood rituals, and at the same time speaks of warmth and life. In the large fresco called Priapea , of 1980, cherubic infants are surrounded by this red. I was first drawn to the color enveloping the pale, childlike figures. A well-known image is The Four Corners , a giant hand emerging from a watery orb, fingers and thumb arranged in what could be a mudra, or sacred symbolic gesture.
Stars spangle the sky above.
Drawn on the hand is a map of the world centered on the African continent, an idiosyncratic diagram of intimate terrain. Examining it to see what boundaries and names Clemente included, I realized how fragmentary and inaccurate a world map I would draw from memory. The painting is a mysterious emblem, indecipherable yet possessing strange significance. Besides his self-images, Clemente often uses animal figures in his work. His depictions of them in Oblation evoke a sense of wonder at the diversity of forms spawned upon this planet.