When I set out to become an artist, I knew I wanted my work to explore the Black experience in its fullness; not just through pain or resilience, but as a complete, nuanced existence. At first, I saw my life and its themes as separate from my art, with the work acting as a bridge between the two. Over time, that divide dissolved. My practice now draws directly from my lived experiences: a Black religious upbringing, the complexity of familial addiction, the search for ancestral truths, and the evolving reality of my queer and trans identity.
To delve deeper into (and often beyond) the generational hardship of Black queer lineage, I use vibrancy and texture to complicate how these narratives are received. I want to disorient the viewer just enough to make space for both gravity and levity, to make light of the dark, not by erasing it, but by reimagining how it can be held. I’ve long been inspired by children’s book illustrations. As a child, they were a form of mental escape; portals into expansive, whimsical worlds where even the heaviest topics became digestible. That influence still shapes how I approach storytelling.