Works on Paper
Collages
Installation
Video
Studio Love Letter
Contact
About
CV
Where can fantasy emerge? I define my characters as “Butch Queens”: figures too fabulous for a single reflection. They expand across multiple portals, interrogating the intersections of Gay Black male identity.
I build worlds using oil paint and figuration. Through this process, I meditate on tableaus of fictional moments sourced from visions. I create images from desire, fabulating a multidimensional fictional world. The paintings are a love letter to a fantasy of liberation, seen through the lens of my Black Queer Utopia.
I begin by designing sets with found objects and furniture in intimate spaces—my apartment, my studio, or a going-out-of-business clothing store, holding a time capsule of early 2000s Black fashion brands. Using bedsheets, backdrops, lighting, and objects, I construct portals for my characters. These settings, collaged together, create abstracted realms with remnants of the characters. Intended for further manipulation, the sets serve as foundations for the story.
As I stage scenes, I create fiction. I often invite friends to play characters, directing what they wear and how they act on set. My painting uses metaphors and symbols to start a quiet conversation in the artwork. Viewers see the story in how the figures move, in what is hidden, and in coded details. I am not painting models; I am inviting guests to my utopia.
The scale invites the viewer into a theatrical space, showcasing an evolving narrative. Cinematic moments within the compositions act as windows, drawing the viewer into the characters' emotional exchanges. The dramatic storytelling and temporal fragmentation create a layered reality—a call for freedom. Black Queer interiority is collaged together, each element representing fragments of lived experience that surface in the paintings. My great-grandmother curated her home to preserve her family’s image while inspiring new possibilities. By reflecting on the concept of home, I reimagine it as a sanctuary where identity and dreams can rest, embracing the potential for the self to exhale.
Using the language of painting and the vulnerability of collage, I step towards the images that I yearn to reveal. Through multiple phases of searching, I work towards the final painting. My voice and vision are only one sprouting of a lineage of Gay Black Artists. The "Butch Queens" transform a conversation with the intersections of Blackness and Queerness. With a nod to Renaissance paintings, I am inherently political. I insert narratives into an alienating art-historical canon. My works speak to the erasure of voices as I contribute unique storytelling to the archive and provide a testimonial as one who has fallen into the dance of painting. I seek moments to capture the past, present, and beyond.