ARTIST STATEMENT

My artwork is a record of the experiences of Black people in America. It is a political commentary on the hardships we are currently facing, while revealing continuities in our oppressions from the moment we were brought to this country to now. My work also gives a critique of “the Canon” of Western art history by pairing Black bodies with art historical symbols reserved for Europeans; therefore, celebrating Blackness that was once overlooked.

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My perspective is inspired by my, and my family’s, experience as a person of color from the South coming of age in a time of much political unrest. The Black Lives Matter Movement has opened my eyes to the continued presence of explicit and implicit racism that exists, even though some like to believe that our country has progressed beyond it. We as a nation have been forced to recognize that, although slavery has been abolished, much more work is needed from all of us. Art is my way of calling for the change we need.

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Most of my work consists of medium to large scale oil portraits. The larger scale is meant to grab my viewers’ attention and to draw them into the political messaging behind the art. The many small details within the large compositions gradually reveal new information to the audience that pieces together the entire message. My compositions are inspired by imagery and phrases I see in the news, in protests, and in song lyrics from musical artists who also speak to Black experiences. I tie those current ideas to historical references in America and Western culture to comment on the unequal treatment people of color have been, and continue to, endure. The people in my portraits tend to be my immediate family members and close friends. I repeatedly paint my family members because of their dynamic roles in my life that I have the privilege of experiencing. However, stereotypes of Black people threaten to flatten their complex individuality to strangers, which can be fatal in the outside world. This flattening is what I push to expose and reject in my portraits.

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