If you were to step into one of my paintings, you might feel as though you suddenly interrupted a brief moment in time. My paintings portray mostly female figures that are pondersome, inquisitive, and reflective with a gaze that is directed at the viewer. Through my art, I am weaving together my love for the human psyche—particularly as it relates to our search for meaning. With my love of patterns, architecture, botanicals, and fashion, I invite the viewer to imagine my subjects’ story and how it relates to that of their own.

Memories encompass where we come from, who we know, and what we subconsciously find important. They make up who we are but they are also malleable and can be manipulated like any medium used in art. I reevaluate my personal memories for moments that have either affected how I interact with others or impacted the intersection of my marginalized identities. Working from my individual past both articulates a better understanding of my own background as a Black Carolinian woman and creates a platform where others can find relatable connections from my work in their lives.

My work is about history, spirituality, and my attraction to repetitive patterns found in the surrounding environment. The latest paintings are influenced by medieval illuminated manuscripts, a result of searching the digital collections of libraries around the world during the pandemic. The paintings are large-scale, built up with acrylic paint, acrylic pens, ink, and printmaking techniques. Drawing is a very important element in my work. I manipulate my drawings and photo images using a drawing filter from the computer and make silkscreens out of them.

I create vivid abstractions that harness the power of chance to explore color and form. I’m interested in making loosely sequential images that echo the disjointed and time-specific color palettes of cultural ephemera and nostalgia. The geometrically painted images yield variations that juxtapose considered and spontaneous mark making. Collage elements supplant the subtle nuances of paint with hard edged geometries. The accumulative hypnotic effect of the paintings is offset by textural variation that adds a weathered, impulsive energy.

 “Yes . . .” that peculiar
affirmative. “Yes . . .”
A sharp, indrawn breath,
half groan, half acceptance,
that means “Life’s like that.
We know it (also death).”
–Elizabeth Bishop, from “The Moose”

Vanitas painting of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is certainly reblooming in the still-life paintings created today. Grief for our lives lived pre-pandemic is tangible in my paintings. Objects as benign as board games, houseplants, and tarot cards become signifiers of futility, doubt, and fear while simultaneously offering moments of respite.

 My artistic philosophy is one of slowing down, listening, and letting the moment guide the painting. The psychology of perception is at the forefront of my interests. My work explores the dreamlike space between body, emotion, and culture. I am deeply engaged in how the act of painting can reveal my own feelings about a subject. Ultimately, this process is what enables me to create paintings that transcend simple depictions of physical appearance.

 I pursue interaction and perception from my role as observer, occupied by the unremarkable and informed by our everyday exchanges. Reflecting direct encounters within my environment, I work with still life, portraiture, and landscape—the pillars of perceptual painting. Drawing from the quotidian and familiar, I navigate the space between seeing and describing, interpretation and invention.

 I feel moved to explore the unknowns and mysteries that propel human nature to keep thriving and searching, to move forward no matter the circumstances. In this body of work, I explore a dystopian narrative about the deterioration and atrophy of the earth that resulted from the human-created climate crisis. Through the medium of paint, I explore what it would be like to resurface from underground and find that the earth’s ecosystems had evolved to support new life.

 It is an odd thing to be inside a body, to be known within that body, read as a race, a gender, an ethnicity. These identities are activated by the gaze of others, invented by the gaze of power. We are lacerated into largely binary categories; these classifications determining the material realities enacted upon us.