Artist Statement

 

My artwork offers glimpses into the lives of African Americans through visual lyricism.  I illustrate the positive and negative aspects of the African American experience. I draw upon the history, the present and future hopes of our society to provoke questions as well as offer answers to the plight of Black people in America.  My style is akin to Hip Hop, the foundation being a classical composition with an improvisational jazz  slash R&B sensitivity depicting raw images of urban life.

 

My initial exposure to fine art was in elementary school where I learned about the lives and works of classic artist such as Monet, Manet, DiVinci and Rembrandt. This sparked my interest in art.  I began to paint landscapes of places I had never been. Later I began to discover the works of Norman Rockwell, Van Gough, Thomas Kincaid, and Ernie Barnes.  Ernie Barnes had a huge impact on me because I was seeing images of the life I was living in vivid colors stretched on canvas and celebrated unashamedly. The admiration for life expressed in works by Rockwell I was now equally displaying toward the more relatible reality of Barnes. 

 

I am now developing my own artistic voice. The tools I employ range from reference photographs, a Wacom tablet, and my Macintosh with the same dexterity as I would a live model, a brush and a canvas.  I am learning the techniques of the great masters like DaVinci, Carravagio, and Renoir while adding the pride and swagger of Barnes and the consciousness of Romare Bearden. I strive to create art considering contextual depth of the past while addressing the contemporary concerns, mixing whatever medium I find appropriate to interpret the message. I combined a minimal object oil painting with photo-collage to create “Take It To His Throne” a perspective on Black spirituality and dealing with everyday concerns.  Likewise I have combined oil and acrylic in “Troubles On My Mind” to illustrate the stresses of being a young Black male. I pay tribute to Delta Blues, Hip Hop, Jazz and Funk in a series of digital photo manipulation compositions.

 

I have a love for history as well as art and music.  I often use both as reference as well as inspiration.  I painted “Hauted” with this sensitivity in mind.  An image of the billowing sails of a slave ship looming over the conjested tenaments of an American urban housing project. I salute jazz in a series of 3 white Conte’ drawings of legends Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Charlie Parker. In “What’s Going On”, I reference current events of this generation as a backdrop to my representation of Marvin Gaye.  My figurative drawings and paintings celebrate the beauty of ancestry of the Black culture in “Spirits”, which captures the personifications of the diversity of African civilizations that strengthens today Black male.

 

I have found that art can encompass music, history, beauty, tragedy, love and oppression. Through the choice of medium and the context of message I have been able to compose visual lyricism on paper or canvas, though pixels and paint.  I am able to tell my story, the story of Black America in my own unique way by incorporating the techniques developed in the Renaissance, adopted and molded in Harlem, and remixed with the computer.