As part of their weekly #BehindTheCover series, the New York Times featured Aretha Franklin in their annual The Lives They Lived issue. Drawn by Toyin Ojih Odutola, the beautiful sketch features Aretha mid-song, etched in ballpoint pen.
The Nigerian-bred artist, according to her site, “creates multimedia drawings on various surfaces investing formulaic representations and how such images can be unreliavle and socially-coded.” Her work has been featured in the Mississippi Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, and more.
On Instagram, the artist shared the importance of this moment. “I took this opportunity deeply to heart, which is why I decided to go back to my roots and work with pen, a tool that sparked my love for art making,” she wrote. “She is captured mid-song, to emphasize the vitality, freedom and vulnerability emblematic of a woman who truly redefined an art form and created a new language of expression that was hers to claim and she thoroughly enjoyed. I hope you all hear her unmistakable and inspiring voice when you see the portrait as I did while drawing it.”
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Toyin told The New York Times “The cover portrait captures her midsong. She let her voice spring forth with such freedom and vulnerabilty — there are performances from the ’70s where the way she would sing while playing the piano was just unreal. She’s sounding almost, at some points, like she couldn’t control it. I wanted us to feel that.”
