Durrett (b. 1994) is a Chicago-born architect and abstract figurative artist based in Central Florida. Working across mixed-media painting and sculpture, her practice explores identity, lineage, and psychological healing within the Black diaspora. Grounded in her training in architecture, where she earned a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Arizona, Durrett approaches each surface as a constructed space shaped by memory, movement, and lived experience.
In 2022, painting became central to her practice as a means of recovery and self-reconstruction following an eight-year abusive relationship. Since then, her work has focused on repair, using the figure, continuous contour linework, and natural materials, to explore how connection, care, and resilience are rebuilt after rupture. Her work often centers the head and neck as sites of memory, emotion, and identity, informed by research into Black psychology and embodied experience.
Durrett’s work has been exhibited nationally, including at the Museum of Science and Industry Chicago, Orlando Museum of Art, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, the Mint Museum, Art Basel Miami, and EXPO Chicago. Her work has been featured in 1919 Mag, Blacque, Sugarcane Magazine, and the Orlando Foundation for Architecture archives.
Statement
I create because connection has not always been guaranteed in my life. As a Black American woman shaped by fractured family histories, absence, and survival, my work is a way of finding myself while reaching toward others. My practice began in architecture, where I became deeply interested in how human stories, from our movement, memory, and relationships, shape the built environment, and how those spaces, in turn, shape us. That way of seeing has carried into my art practice, where I create abstract figurative, mixed-media works that explore identity, lineage, and healing within the Black diaspora. I often use continuous contour linework, where each figure is formed from a single, unbroken line, as a reflection of how our stories are connected, layered, and never truly separate. Drawing from research, oral histories, and personal experience, including my own journey through abuse, recovery, and self-reconstruction, I translate lived narratives into visual form. Creating allows me to honor stories that were fragmented or untold, reconnect with roots I am still learning, and build spaces on canvas where empowerment, healing, and human connection can exist
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