The Process

The Process

Part action painter, part mixed media sculpture, part illustrator. There is no single way of working, or medium, I ascribe to, as I seek to be polymathic in my practice. How I go about creating something, is equally important as to what I produce. I like to think my work is always in dialogue with itself as I tend to work on multiple pieces at once either building off of previous processes and ideas and incorporating them in new pieces in familiar ways, or contrasting an idea, or way of working, with it's antithesis. For example, If I am working on a single large scale, messy, intensive, combine painting, I'll usually have a very minimal simple series going on the side. Or, if I am working a lot with my eyes and mind, I'll have another piece going where I can just work with my heart and my hands. Sometimes I alternate between these spectrums on the same piece, cycling between consciously and unconsciously working. There is a consistency marked by a variation. The materials, medium, objects I use tend to dictate content as I try to draw from a variety of sources. I like to improvise with what is readily available in the world around me. Music is constant in my work as rhythm, lyric, sounds, inspire ideas and forms. I frequently use highly saturated, non-mixed colors to speak, and I enjoy attrition and layering in my process. I like to play with space. I also write as I create. This helps me organize and expound upon my visual ideas, for many of my pieces there is a poem or prose that accompanies the series. Eventually, I began using text visually and conceptually in my work frequently as a catalyst to create form and composition. I tend to borrow from other artists; artists of all disciplines, past and present, as I explore themes such as contemporary black male culture, consumerism and capitalism, perspective and permanence, and innocence and ignorance. My work is often personal, as I embed objects from my past, and reflect heavily on my own upbringing and the idea of family. At it's heart my process is an investigation of the human body, mind, and spirit. Who are we? Where are we going? Where did we come from? I research the human condition.