My work focuses on images that center on my African-American lineage; traced to sharecroppers of the American South who migrated to northern cities along the east coast. The pictorial narratives are personal, yet the symbols interplay with larger social, racial, ancestral, economic and political histories that speak to current issues. My work aims to imbue each piece with the lyrical yet authentic effects of resilience, limited resources, and frugality; exploring the struggle and hope, pain, joy, and soul of folks in the black community.
Born of a generation infused with soul and R&B music, my representational and abstract works incorporate symbols, patterns and marks to assimilate powerful images that possess rhythmic properties of music that weave throughout my oeuvre. Combining acrylic paint with an array of found, created and purchased papers, I work with the same spontaneity of the Hip Hop artists and the resourcefulness of rural quilters of Gee’s Bend; using materials at hand to assemble, collage, and create something out of nothing.