These are abstract landscapes/seascapes of Charleston painted vertically to capture a portrait of the memory that still resonates upon and within the land. My goal while being there was to create glimpses of my collected experiences on to the hand dyed indigo surface. Whether it the sunset dancing over the marsh, the vibration of long meter from the plantation church house, the waves of the ocean collapsing onto the shore, or the blue fingertips of indigenous black people, and the beautiful ebony complexion of Ben-yas.

 

I am a multidisciplinary artist interested in the relationships of substrate and medium. I am building upon the linage of abstraction and landscape artists that came before me. I am interested in the found material, ideas of beauty, color relationships and making an object. 

These are artistic meditations. Gather and create, tearing and cutting. Displaying ideas about color. Pigment in its liquid opacity. Considering how colors references while creating new palettes and continuing to investigate. 

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My work is concerned with the Black American vernacular experience. The work entails collecting found materials, Georgia red clay, and Dutch Wax cloth, by creating a conversation between family, tradition, the spiritual and material relationship between Africa and the South. My process is influenced by the way Hip Hop gathers different cultures through sampling and is charged with an energy passed channeled through the Pan African lineage. The work is inspired by the Great Migration of Black Americans, who left the familiar in the hope of something better. 

Separating of the Gree Gree bags from the surfaces and allowing them to live on their own space they become gateways into new spaces to be explored.

This body of work is a residue of the time I spent at the Vermont Studio Center; I was there for almost a month. To see rolling green hills reaching towards the bright blue the sky, the warmth of the sun brushing over the grass bringing out the gentle yellow in the color, the wind softly tossing the grass back and forth so the blue in grass was accessible as well. It was so beautiful; I was so inspired. I set up at different locations along the rivers so that I could get all the environment, trees, grass, water, sky and soil. I did timed gesture drawings, hour ½ in the morning, hour ½ in the evening, opposite days. After I returned home, I began a new body of work, I did not realize how much Vermont influenced me. Every painting these beautiful greens would show up, and I just allowed it to happen. In these paintings I hoped to create a horizontal and vertical view of nature, to be in it and above it simultaneously.

This series excavates concepts of Black joy. Exploring abstraction, and the way that we encounter the painting surface. FLAT SPLAT just Like THAT is inspired by the movie The Wiz. The Wiz is the Motown reproduction of The Wizard of Oz. The construction of FLAT SPLAT just like THAT is a stripped down, minimal continuation of his fabric series, extracting aspects of previous work. Venturing deeper into the glyphs, giving them a deeper read by creating and breaking his own pattern directly on the canvas.

My work is concerned with the Black American vernacular experience. The work entails collecting found materials, Georgia red clay, and Dutch Wax cloth, by creating a conversation between family, tradition, the spiritual and material relationship between Africa and the South. My process is influenced by the way Hip Hop gathers different cultures through sampling and is charged with an energy passed channeled through the Pan African lineage. The work is inspired by the Great Migration of Black Americans, who left the familiar in the hope of something better. 

My work is concerned with the Black American vernacular experience. The work entails collecting found materials, Georgia red clay, and Dutch Wax cloth, by creating a conversation between family, tradition, the spiritual and material relationship between Africa and the South. My process is influenced by the way Hip Hop gathers different cultures through sampling and is charged with an energy passed channeled through the Pan African lineage. The work is inspired by the Great Migration of Black Americans, who left the familiar in the hope of something better.