Esiri Erheriene-Essi is a figurative painter who depicts quiet histories of Black life. She paints from a wide collection of photographs, predominantly from the 1960s and 70s – sourced online, at flea markets and occasionally from her family archives. Erheriene-Essi begins by sketching on her computer, editing the source image and creating a sort of digital collage which is later sketched up on the canvas in ink. Before painting, she adds more images from her archive through a process of xerox transfer. Thick brushstrokes are then applied in oil in her impressionistic style. Comic-books and modernist painters from The London School such as Lucian Freud were a formative influence for the artist, while Classical painting and theorists such as Stuart Hall and Tina Campt continue to inform her work.