STATEMENT OF WORK

My art practice encompasses painting, drawing, and printmaking. My paintings are built with various materials and on a range of surfaces, including canvas, paper, linen, and unstretched canvas. My work often places figures amongst imagined or altered landscapes and abstract grounds. The spaces and figures I imagine are contextualized by my own lived experience and cultural influences, in addition to the inherited memories and cultures of my family. Particularly my mother, who is from Antigua.

I have never been to Antigua myself. The floating atmosphere within my images expresses my own experiences of displacement. My first-generation experience in New Jersey needed an extended family presence. This lack of extended familial access led to feeling unrooted in my immediate environment. The Caribbean diasporic experiences I had exposure to were not specific to Antigua. In my prints and paintings of Antiguan beaches and cathedrals, the atmosphere and intensity of light in those works are sourced from my conversations with my mother about her childhood in St. John’s and Newfield Village. 

Through my art practice, I work to place myself in the world by being in communication with other artists and attempting to contextualize my life experience. Some of these experiences include my interest in fashion and streetwear, personal encounters with the police and the diasporic experiences of youth culture in Black communities. My art practice allows me to visualize my lived experiences and self-reflect, placing context on my interaction with the world through the processing of information, imagination, and memories.