Finding my truth. Here. Now! The importance of actualization...

This moment in time, for me, has a quality that I want to reflect and express my artistic perspective against the current landscape we find ourselves. Both socially and politically we are changing. As I enter into my studio I feel a rush of emotion that brings me to a place of deep reflections….

The Time Is Now!

What I’m doing with my voice in this very moment!

There’s so much to reflect on and contemplate…

This goes back to the point: if I had to make the painting exact to the model, in the way I was painting my past work, I wouldn’t have accomplished the same thing. In a way, it’s a crisis of faith: I know what I’m seeing and what I want to put out but there’s a sect of people who are used to seeing the golden standard and don’t get what I’m doing. It’s not representational, it’s not abstract, it’s not the current standard of Black art. It’s just Art.

It’s the thing that bothers me the most about the idea of representing in painting what something should look like. It doesn’t matter what kind of work you’re doing; people are trained to see a certain thing a certain way. If you’re talking about Black issues, the current thinking is that it needs to be presented in this specific way. But I have to ask, does it fit because it’s relevant and is it relevant even if it doesn’t fit in the confines of what people perceive this message should be? The few Black artists getting most attention have a very strong view—it’s more slap-you-in-the-face imagery. I have a more subtle personality. Take Mark Bradford, for example. If you lookedat his work and didn’t know the story behind it, you’d still see beautiful abstract work. You wouldn’t make the assessment of it being about race, class, culture and politics. Does that work belong in the dialogue because of its aesthetic quality or because of the voice?

I don’t know where this is going to go. I do know I have something to say and I know I can’t help myself from saying it.