Elegua’s Magic Coconut Acrylic Painting

Written by Teresita Blanco (The Artsy Sister)

The featured painting is relatively new. It is one of those types of paintings that is obvious to some, but confusing to others. For those not familiar with Santeria, the coconut belongs to Elegua. He is a child saint of Santeria. He is associated with Keys, and Saint Peter. There was a lot of religious syncretism in Cuba. I first became familiar with the child saint, when I was little.

My grandma had a little statuette of the fellow in the form of a mountain, with a creepy face. When she blew smoke on it, it would release a sugary sap from the top. It was really weird. I never got into the whole Santeria thing. I did study it in at University, as an elective.

The class was called Caribbean religions. In addition to Santeria, I studied Voodoo and Rastafarianism. It was an interesting class, to say the least. Aside from those old memories of my dead grandma, I do not have a lot of personal experience with Elegua, and his religion.

I have my own beliefs, and they do not coincide with Santeria. I remember one time when I was really sick, I had a bizarre dream. I saw a candle near a string, and it was about to burn it. Elegua, Ogun and Damballah came, and they moved the candle away from the string.

When mother told the dream to one of her old bosses, he said that I had a powerful connection with the saints. The saints saw that I was dying, and so they gave me more time. Truth be told, I always felt more of a kindship with other worldly types of beings, than my own fellow man.

This brings me to the reason why I made this painting. As you may not guess, it has nothing to do with the dream. My brother had recently told me one of the legends about Elegua. In the Yoruba religion, Elegua was a originally human. He was a child prince who found a magic coconut.

The coconut made him sick, but he really wanted it. He got sad whenever his parents took it away. Eventually, he died because of the coconut. Since he was a just prince, he was reborn as a saint. Now, he helps his followers. According to Voodoo, the Saints have three different faces, depending on their moods.

This makes sense to me, because of their human nature. If you call a fellow in a bad mood, there is a good change that instead of helping you, he might do you harm. To keep the Saints from ignoring the humans, Oludumare created the Ti bo naj system. I am not certain if I spelled it right.

It has been years since I took the class. Anyhow, this system gave powers and immortality to the saints, but only if they answered a human’s prayers. Once the Ti bo naj runs out, they will loose all their powers and become normal dead people. Elegua’s particular ability is that of language.

When Ezili was giving out powers, she ran out of them when she reached Elegua. To give him some ability, she gave him the power of language. Now, to talk to the other saints, you have no choice, but to speak with Elegua first. If he is in a foul mood with you, he will tell something bad to the saint you are trying to beckon.

I hope you find this whole information somewhat amusing, and educational. It is fun to learn about other people’s religions. Humans have the bad habit of demonizing those who do not think the same way as they do. The painting itself was made for no particular reason.

Brother told me that Elegua was a child that died, and that made me sad. I then made this painting. It is sad when children die. By now, you know why the painting has a coconut as the central focus. The checkerboard pattern has the colors associated with the saint.

The candy is a typical gift given to the saint, as well as the marbles. See, when you know the religious history of something the meaning of a painting becomes pretty obvious. The painting was made with acrylics. I used US Art Supply acrylics and Liquitex.

I have been using the US Art Supply paints, because I still have paints related to the original art set I got from that brand. I am the type of person to make the most out of whatever art supplies I get. The glitter on the checkerboard pattern was placed there using a toothbrush.

As a binding agent, I used some pouring medium from Liquitex. That medium for some reason just happens to be a real useful glue. Since it dries clear, the glitter still shines rather nicely. The transparency of the marbles was done with very light, iridescent white from Liquitex.

The paint was diluted a lot with water, to allow for a very thin application of the paint. The sugary powder on the blue candies is glitter. The coconut itself was painted with metallic Liquitex paints. I hope you find this information about the acrylic painting useful.

Before applying the paints, I drew on the canvas with a mechanical pencil. I have been drawing with mechanical pencils since high school. It is for this reason that I sometimes find regular pencils a bit annoying to work with. I think this is enough information about this painting.

I hope you found the story about Santeria, and Elegua interesting. On a side note, if you wish to summon the fellow to do evil, I doubt it will work. In all the stories about Oludumare, he punished the saints back when they were human, for being unjust. This is well noted in the legend of Chango.

The moment he turned evil, Oludumare struck the man dead via a lightning bolt. Keeping this in mind, I doubt Oludumare would allow the Saints to do evil, now that they have divine powers. Don’t forget this as you go buy your silly voodoo dolls. Instead of wishing evil onto others, instead pray for good things to happen to you.