Exhibitions

Celestial Dreaming

 

Artist Statement

 

Like so many people today I too was becoming numb to the news of young black men dying on the streets of our nation as victims of police brutality and gun violence.  I could not make sense of these murders.  For my own sanity I wanted to envision a more peaceful, positive and purposeful destiny for these young souls after such a horrific end to their young lives.  I therefore needed to conceive another narrative.  So I began by asking:

Where does the soul of a murdered black child go?

That question became personal in 2013 when Kamau Chandler, the first-born son of my godson Cheo, was murdered by another black 17-year-old on Fulton Street in Brooklyn, NY. 

My response to the aforementioned question is Celestial Dreaming, a collection of paintings that imagines the souls of murdered black youth on a journey from pre-life to a celestial after-life existence and a return to the natural world to make positive contributions to humankind.

While many belief systems inform this collection, it is primarily grounded in the concept of rebirth that is fundamental to Kongo and Yoruba theology. 

Portraits of Yemaya

 Artist Statement

In the manner of the 19th century Hudson River School painters who reasoned that the sublime found in nature provides evidence of the existence of God, I contend that a portrait of Yemaya can be experienced through images of the sea and things touched by the sea.  Yemaya is the Yoruba orisha -- deity -- whose domain is the sea.  She is a maternal deity with special significance to African descent peoples in America whose ancestors traveled the seas as victims of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. 

            The photographs in this collection were taken in port cities I visited while conducting field research on African spiritual and aesthetic retentions, rediscoveries and re-inventions in the African Diaspora to inform my art practice and scholarship.