“I decided, regardless of whether I get paid to make art or not, that’s what I need to do.”
WHERE DID YOUR INTEREST IN ART COME FROM?
As far back as I can remember I could always just do it, I could always draw. Growing up where we did in Denver, everyone on the block knew everybody. The neighbors would come by and socialize and see me drawing and ask if I could draw them. I think that’s where it really started. When I was 15, my parents divorced and my mom moved us to Columbus, Ohio. That was a strange period for me; I became quiet and withdrawn. But art was my solace; I could completely get lost in it. I would spend all of my study halls in the art room and I was surrounded with great instructors who helped nurture my talent. They encouraged me to enter contests and apply for many scholarships, which I was subsequently awarded.
I started taking classes at the Columbus College of Art and Design when I was 16 and they gave me a full-ride scholarship to study there after high school. Classes were based in traditional drawing and painting, which was great but in my second year, I started to worry about what kind of job I could get. And I wanted to get back to Denver. I transferred to the Colorado Art Institute and studied commercial art. Towards the end of my time there, I met an instructor who looked at my illustrations and said they were irrelevant because I was a painter. I didn’t know what he meant at first. I graduated and worked for a couple ad agencies but quit after two years—it was irrelevant.
FOR YEARS YOUR WORK WAS TRADITIONAL, REPRESENTATIONAL, ROMANTIC EVEN. WHAT SPARKED SUCH A MAJOR SHIFT?
I was invited to create work for a collaborative show where one artist worked on a painting then passed it to the other artist. I remember looking at a blank canvas and thinking, what are we going to do with this? The artist I was paired with was an abstract artist. I thought, how in the world are we going work together? But then I realized the real issue wasn’t blending styles but something more subtle: how do we communicate?
“I started to see everything in an abstract way. ”
I had to look at painting differently. I started to see everything in an abstract way. We were, I suddenly realized, already speaking the same language. But, to make a collaboration work, I knew I had to give up something. I’m a figurative painter so I didn’t want to lose the figure because that’s something I’ve always been fond of. (For me, an artist can say a lot with abstraction, but when you have the figure involved it speaks volumes.)
SOUNDS LIKE SOMETHING OF AN EPIPHANY.
It was. After that collaborative show, I started playing around with the idea of building abstract surfaces, not controlling them but letting my intuition go to work. It wasn’t my intent to push into total abstraction but there’s this thing inside me that came alive. Honestly, this new work isn’t as much of a stretch from the past work; it was there all along, I was just covering it up, trying to keep it away from the public eye. Now I’m making a concentrated effort to uncover it all and let it be what it is.
WAS THERE FEAR IN TAKING ON A NEW DIRECTION MID-CAREER?
“My heart was telling me to do this, so I had no choice.”
Definitely. I had been afraid of this new work not being received; I was known for a different kind of painting. I’m a painter and I didn’t want that to stop—what if my audience didn’t like it? But what was more over-powering was that I had to follow this line of inquiry in my painting and not live with regrets. My heart was telling me to do this, so I had no choice. I had a gallerist come by and see the work in my studio. He asked to show it and it took off. I haven’t had to look back.
DOES THE NEW WORK PUT DIFFERENT DEMANDS ON YOU?
“I can no longer hide behind a traditionally rendered painting and think of it as the end-all.”
I can no longer hide behind a traditionally rendered painting and think of it as the end-all. Art is much broader than that. What I’m not really clear about with this new body of work is what form it will take and where it will go. I’m still working through what it will look like. There’s always this sense of harmonious connection that I’m trying to explore and achieve. It’s harder now dealing with deadlines—this work is so personal; I can’t put constraints on it. It isn’t done until my mind, heart and soul releases it.
DOES EMOTION IN THIS WORK COME OUT OF THE BALANCE OF REALISM AND ABSTRACTION OR IS YOUR LIFE BUBBLING TO THE SURFACE?
I think it’s the latter. When you’re young you might have a few layers of depth but over time the layers start to build up. To get to the truth of who you are, it takes time. As I continue to work, I find there’s a lot beneath the surface. I’m allowing myself to observe without being pretentious. I’m not the person who does things for shock value. I choose subtle ways to make a statement. If you’re listening visually, you’ll pick up on it.
HOW DO YOU SELECT MODELS?
“I think artists are people who provoke thought. ”
I used to use models regularly, now I don’t so much. It’s not about likeness but about the emotion. I have a few models that I bring in for specific purposes, but you probably wouldn’t recognize them. I’m using elements of the figure to describe the emotion. If I start to get caught up in the realism, I step back and ask myself, is it relevant? Does the world need this? If you’re simply moving information from one area onto another, what’s the point? An artist takes information and interprets it, creates a statement. I think artists are people that provoke thought.
AS A BLACK ARTIST, HOW DOES COLOR COME INTO PLAY IN YOUR WORK?
“That painting represented the whole thing for me.”
Now, it depends on what I’m conceptually moving toward. The Static series addresses my specific and very personal experiences of being profiled. In the painting, Still, when I got to the eyes of the figure, it really came home to me how I felt the many times I was pulled over. One time in particular, I was pulled over with sirens blaring while my three-year-old son, sitting in his car seat, looked on and asked me, “Daddy, are they gonna shoot you?” I could only reply, “I hope not.” With a megaphone, they ordered me to put my hands out the window, open the door with my right hand, put my hands over my head, lace my fingers and walk backwards. In the very moment I was grabbed and pushed to the ground, handcuffed for absolutely no reason, the thought crossed my mind, “Are they gonna shoot me?” That painting represented the whole thing for me. Now, someone on the outside seeing that painting, I’m not sure what they would get out of that, but for that particular painting, I knew it would be a person of color.
“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.”
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 looked at 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.
