Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

I'm going to pass on commenting on "Jefferson," being myself an African. I find Wilfrid's fabrication/sculpting and painting impressive, but the characterizations underwhelm. Caricatures of stereotypes - the protruding lipped, near-buck toothed, slit eyed Asian female; the small-headed swimmer - and dysmorphic imaginative blobs... I really like the work, but I'm not too taken by the ideas behind it.

I thought some of these were very clever, but then I saw this one:

http://www.wilfridwood.com/image/246.jpg

Which kind of disturbs me. It appears to be a gentleman of African descent with the colorful features of a babboon, titled "Jefferson". Since the portrayal of Africans as simians or simian-like has historically been associated with racism, this seems like a very bad idea. Whether intentional or not, I really don't think I'm reading into things here.