Artistic Statement

Artistic Statement

My art is most concerned with centering the Black LGBT Southern experience, where I explore the influences of the Black Church, Black culture, and the Bible Belt on constructed and reconstructed identities and the self. I work at using art as the primary means of inquiry into the performance and intersectionality of identities, as well as the othering of specific gender, sexual, racial, and religious identities. I work in various mediums and genres of storytelling, depicting how identities are performed and protected, how fixed beliefs and perceptions are formed and reformed, how identity markers function as mirages and labels as tools of limitation and elimination and, ultimately, how we become liberated, permitting ourselves and others to evolve and present the authentic self. Thus, central to my storytelling are human moments of vulnerability, connection, and emotional intimacy in character-driven narratives, with a mission to create thought-provoking work that serves as a pathway toward understanding, empathy, reconciliation, and healing.