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Donaldson-1

"Art/image-making," the writer Larry Neal said in 1976, "is fundamentally the working out of the mysteries that undergird human experience." Neal also suggested that the icon or image represents the symbolic identity of both the artist and the par-titular spiritual, cultural and political milieu of its creation. 
In recent years, particularly since the 1960's, many artists of African descent have produced a broad and impressive array of works that reflect an Afrocentric point of view within styles that are often tangential to the progression of the European visual art continue. This has been true whether the artist worked on the continent or in the far-flung African Diaspora. there were, how- ever, some artists who went further; they found in the socio-politi-cal drama of the day an inducement to imbue their works with the tones and textures which were more closely aligned with the cultural heritage and evolution of dispersed African people clinging to the remnants of their ancestral past and awakening to the new realities and possibilities for expression. The research and experimentation of these activist-artists has led, over the part 30 years, to the development of distinct international Afrocentric visual art style, TRANSAFRICAN ART. 
This group of artists should not be confused with their con-temporaries who justifiable sought equality of opportunity in the mainstream progression of EuroAmerican art history. Since colonial times in the United States, the work of mainstreaming African American artists (which has always equalled and often excelled the quality of their European American contemporaries) has been