ARTIST STATEMENT

My creative practice is an ongoing exploration for truth and enlightenment, motivated by an unwavering devotion to craft and culture. Everyday I am confronting the unknown possibilities of my imagination with fearless passion. I have no choice in this because it is simply who I am. This inner urge to create is not only an irrepressible need to communicate and to share, but it has always been a haven from the difficult realities that can sometimes beset a young Black man-child reared in this society. As I began to grow in age and in artistry, my place of solace, my art, began to reflect the disturbing unbalances that I experienced and witnessed in our society. I soon realized that my predestination as a maker was directly linked with the burdens I have for my community and for the entire earth. My artistic mission began to manifest itself as a need to examine these trying social/political realities and investigate how these events interweave through the tears and triumphs of the African-American experience. I believe the greatest commitment I can have as an artist, and particularly an artist of color, is to bring to our society the ideals of freedom and justice. I began creating visual conversations to increase awareness of the ever-adapting, historical message of racial hatred and the systems and infrastructures that perpetuate and disseminate these messages. I believe that by understanding the hegemonic power, methodology, and mission of hyper-sensationalized “race hate” propaganda we can identify, analyze and hopefully counteract the damaging effect it has had on the American psyche and on the world. This acute mental and moral impairment is what tragically has allowed insanities such as police brutality and mass incarceration to not only exist but also thrive and flourish in a supposedly humane society. Sometimes, my work simply attempts to provide positive vibrations to those in barren places by passionately engaging life’s crossroads where self-identity, spirituality, culture and beauty meet. I also want my creations to reflect how the hideous and the sublime coexist as we grapple with rationalizing our world through minefields of distorted truths. My methods of creating are very organic and improvisational in nature, yet I am extremely purposeful and deliberate in my applications. By applying these jazz-influenced principles to my process, I endeavor to reflect both spontaneity and structure simultaneously within my art. Inspired greatly by the tenants of the revolutionary image-makers of the Black Arts Movement, I lovingly embrace the African-American aesthetic. Our use of color, composition, texture, tone, rhythm, movement, and language are unique, with traditions that can be traced back to the beginnings of mankind. My work endeavors to expand upon these great, and often under-appreciated legacies of making while broadening the multi-layered conversations of diversity that ultimately reaffirms the humanity and relevancy of us all. I can only hope that my abilities as a storyteller and transformer of spaces are fully realized and that my creations are experienced, speaks truth and are deemed relevant to the human cause.