A lifelong existentialism informs my work. Through dense layers of gradually applied ink strokes, I have created a sustained studio practice that occupies my conscious mind while allowing my heart to survey the subconscious factors that inform my beliefs and worldview. Arms contort, conflict, support, and transmogrify as I explore my capacity to foster love and intimacy. My compositions rely on vast negative spaces, alluding to the escapes and self-imposed isolations I have sought for protection. My work conjures and encapsulates tumultuous inner and interpersonal relationships into a permanent inertia, so they can be identified, severed, or transcended. I jokingly and non-jokingly refer to it as an exorcism.


My work considers the ways in which our physical and metaphysical bodies undergo various traumas, expansions, and equilibriums throughout our lifetimes, leaving indelible impressions on our character, physiology, and worldview. As an African-American man raised in the Deep South and a descendant of the Pettway Plantation lineage, I feel a deep responsibility to witness and render my personal struggles with oppression in its various manifestations.