This painting is magnificent for its scope, its imagery, its ideas, and even its palette. The man’s figure dominates the canvas largely because it has not been properly described, or rather because it has been described in dreamlike terms. By his freedom, and by his sharp sense of intrigue, Canon created a masterpiece of avant-garde art from Uganda. Canon himself once said of The Big Boss: “That painting is the soul of a man manifest. It shows that we are usually carrying our childhood within us, but we are expected to be bulwarks of solidity.”
