Mixed media painting with a textural outline. Two of the three figures are represented via acrylic paint; one is represented via a black and white high contrast photograph. One figure contains duct tape.
Three figures ‘star’ in this theatre of the macabre. The scene is of a little white girl riding the back of an enslaved older black girl or woman (house slave) whose mouth is taped shut with pressure sensitive duct tape… while an otherworldly onlooker views… aghast. I symbolically utilize the controlled chaotic drip & drizzle methodology and accentuate with vibrant color. This process elicits emotion and stimulates memories which have been transferred through the DNA of generations of black… and white people. These paintings illustrate in-your-face, undeniable truth and circumstances that are regularly swept under the rug, go overlooked, unacknowledged and unmentioned. I present this contemporary primitive, mixed media narrative and figurative painting with my original black and white photography collaged within.I ‘build’ these paintings on canvas, wood, paper and paperboard. PTSD is an insidious ‘dis-ease’ that permeates the black community and is stoked by blaring inequities and disparities in every aspect of our day-to-day living (financial, health, housing, education, incarceration.) Allow the truth within these paintings to serve as your personal catharsis. May they inform your thoughts, words and deeds and order your steps as you move through the rest of your life.
