CULTURE
Featured
September, 2020
24" x 18"
Acrylic on Canvas Panel
000730
Jacob Blake. Another man that is maimed by police; forever changed by a moment in time. No more protesting! It’s a revolution. Lives, beliefs and systems are being changed. That which will not bend will be broken. That which does not grow will die. Because we bent and bowed and now we are growing…burning with and from your injustice and our own indignities. We seek to reclaim and create our houses. Being Kings and Queens, upright and righteous, beautiful and noble. Our rise comes from the blood their land has absorbed. Rastafari.
Painting insights. Its construction is comprised of all 8 laps. The blue background is the police and the likes that surround us. The brush is loaded and tapped and stopped the colors down. Shots being fired at a target to create a picture. We in the inner city are created by shots, shots at a bucket end zone. Your girl, my girl, Shots at a hair cut, shots at wide noses and big lips. Shots at the very thing that keeps us alive. We take these things, make a new us other than what our mothers and fathers created. The shots they shoot, the sons and daughters of Almighty white father, form a picture as well. Some see resistance in the dark. Some see the complexity of our beauty, our strength. The ability to endure, figure out ways to thrive where they can't survive. Skin tones says something different to everyone. To reclaim humanity. Beauty. I opted to use everyone’s favorite color. Reds, blues, yellows, greens, purples… I try not to promote brands and labels in my work. They don’t free promote me…Seen?
Summer, 2020
18” x 14”
Acrylic on Canvas Panel
000718
George Floyd started out as another pebble in a pile of Black bodies. Now he has risen to the height and stature of a mountain, allowing us all to climb him to greater heights.
Summer, 2020
24" x 18"
Acrylic on Canvas Panel
000717
I've never felt like an American, but when I seen this country from coast to coast shake and crumble, under the heavy hands of the oppressed, when I seen the fires. The looting. I smiled. I felt proud to be an American. To be a Black American.
March, 2020
24" x 18"
Acrylic on Canvas Panel
000696
Pillar of Strength started with the sista from the recent Harriet Tubman movie (Cynthia Erivo). I was thinking how these women didn't have weaves or hair that simulates straight hair; they were leading us to a new form of freedom.
2015
17 1/5" x 24"
Acrylic on Canvas Panel
000462
Jimi Hendrix - To listen to all the greatness of his music is to understand the potential of my people when allowed to grow, explore and experience. This man took a feeling and made it electric without ever learning to read music. He understood it naturally.
“’Scuse me while I kiss the sky.”
September, 2015
14" x 18"
Acrylic on Stretched Canvas
000451
More than ever, in recent years, we, the men and women and young people who live within the low income housing projects, need to redefine our realities. To do this we need to have and feel the safety to play, to grow and to explore the infinite potential of our people.
August 17, 2015
14" x 18"
Acrylic on Stretched Canvas
000440
The love of a mother can be felt through her hands as she uplifts her seed. The hands of the child reach for its goddess and between them we find the hope that is tomorrow. The child learns to turn her face toward the light of God and dance through the reality and complexity of life, moving from the mindset of a little princess to that of a goddess.
August 2, 2015
14" x 18"
Acrylic on Stretched Canvas
000436
If you drive past a park on a nice side of town and see young men in hooded sweatshirts, laughing and rough housing, or if you drive past a nightclub with women in short skirts, men dressed in the latest urban fashions, do you have negative thoughts? Did the pictures in your mind, as you thought about the above words, describe young white university athletes or the professional white men and women from your neighborhood out to blow off steam? If Black and Brown lives are to matter, it will matter what you think and feel when you see them. When you think of them. Different doesn't equate to bad…or dangerous.
April, 2015
24 1/2" x 19"
Acrylic on Cardboard
000407
So many of Pac’s songs are like reflections of my thoughts and persona. I remember singing to a woman on the phone, “I wanna be yo ni-g-g-g-a, we can get drunk and smoke weed all day, it don't matter if you're lonely baby, you need a thug in yo life, them bustas ain't lovin’ you right.”
December, 2013
14" x 18"
Acrylic on Canvas Panel
000361
There have been many songs and paintings that depict hood life. Tupac made “My Block.” Too Short made “The Ghetto.” Scarface’s whole career depicted hood life, “What do you see” being up there. Geto Boys: “Crooked Officer” or “Ghetto Fantasy.” Common’s “The Corner.” Or N.W.A.’s “F*** the Police.”
But none is more widely celebrated or accepted or played every summer at a cookout or family reunion somewhere than the Fresh Prince song, “Summer Time.”
This painting, for me, is along those lines. My hood was more than gang shootings, rapes, murders, robberies. My hood was those things. But friendships, family, happiness, joy, creativity and the innocence of a child also existed within my hood.
April 16, 2013
7" x 5"
Acrylic on Paper
000302
Native Braves aren't the only warriors with brightly colored and meaningful outfits.
7 3/4" x 5"
Acrylic on Cardboard
000278
I wake up stranglin
Tangled in my bed sheets
I know there is a boogie man.
"Tu""
Acrylic
000206
How do you spot an angel? What do god’s angels look like? If one walked the earth, would we know it? We prejudge each other and many people have assumed that all things heavenly are white, as if there are no Asian or Black angels. (Based on the face of the rapper, Common.)
September 11, 2011
20 1/2" x 25"
Acrylic on Cardboard
000199
I used this cardboard to paint on and had some paint left over, so I painted a memorial to 2PAC in the center. The 2PAC painting was spur of the moment. I don't have a good drawing board . The tape will not stick to it and they have very stupid rules on what we can have here. So when I know I'll have projects to send out, I snatch up cardboard being discarded and make me a box which then becomes my drawing board. As you’ll notice there are a lot of outlined rectangles or squares made by pieces I tapes to it and painted and the colors spilled off creating the outline. I had a bunch of paint left over I didn't want to go to waste so I took them colors and painted the picture as best I could from a magazine my cell mate at the time had on the desk.
2Pac RIP, on a cardboard box. Chaos…his life before he ever came into existence, was that of a revolutionary. He brung a new flava to Rap music. He done his thing his way; a way that had not been done before. When I painted this it was not planned. I had the colors left over from another project and didn't want them to go to waste. There was a XXL magazine with his picture. I experimented with mixing colors in a way I had never done before and used a palette knife, another first. This painting is what I came out with – a picture on a box bound for Edgewood College. One of my favorite songs by him is Strictly Representin’ because I too have a head and ain’t no screws in it.” The chaos around him was also incidental. See, I do not have a good drawing board and the rules are very stupid about what we can have. So when I am able to and I know I have projects going out soon, I will snatch up card board and build me a box. This time I used it as my drawing board, so I taped pictures to it and that is much of the square/rectangle out lines. Court yard birds was painted while taped to the back…scratch that, my palm trees were painted while strapped to the back of that. Court yard birds, if you look you will see the outlines.
October 27, 2010
18” x 24”
Acrylic on Canvas Panel
000172
This painting was by Ernie Barnes, and my version is a tribute to him as he is my favorite artist. As a kid I used to go to local galleries and museums and I never seen black artists. The painting was made famous by Marvin Gaye’s album cover and through the TV show, "Good Times." I thought J.J. played by Jimmy Walker was the artist, but either way I was happy to see a black artist who was not doing graffiti. I hope that someday my art will do for some young black person what Barnes’ art did for me. I have survived and thrived because of him.
It always struck me how the people in the painting were doing things that are considered fun but that they never looked happy or looked like they were having fun. That was me.
14" x 11"
Acrylic
000159
When I painted this I had the sacred chalice and the imperial fivah ablaze. I could see the music and so I added musical notes and a shapely sistah singing from her soul, like them powerful soulful singers of yesterday - Labelle and The Franklins or my girl, Millie Jackson. And it was a party to honor Ernie Barnes, the original painter of the Sugar Shack.