Artist Statement: 

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Born and raised in Oklahoma, I am a self-taught, multidisciplinary artist whose practice centers on soft pastel. At the heart of my work is the horse, a figure through which I explore power, labor, capitalism, heroism, and the construction of Black male identity.

 

Growing up in Oklahoma, I encountered the horse as both an everyday presence and a powerful cultural symbol. Within the mythology of the American West, it has represented freedom, conquest, wealth, masculinity, and authority, while its history is equally tied to race, labor, and the production of value. I am interested in the ways the Black body has historically been made into spectacle, and what happens when that gaze is redirected. By placing contemporary Black figures within equestrian and Western imagery, I reconsider who is permitted to occupy the position of hero, who is granted power and visibility, and how Black masculinity can be imagined beyond inherited stereotypes.

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Fashion and hip-hop are central to this exploration. Clothing becomes a visual language of aspiration, masculinity, regional identity, and cultural belonging. Hip-hop informs the way I construct images, layering and remixing references from popular culture, fashion, photography, film, and art history. These influences become a visual language through which I bring contemporary Black identity into conversation with histories of power, representation, and the American West.

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Ultimately, I use the horse to create a space between history and fantasy. My figures inhabit a world where the classical and contemporary, serious and playful coexist. Through these collisions, I seek to create new images of Black masculinity, grounded in history but animated by possibility, pleasure, beauty, and self-determination.