You don’t know how far a box of Crayola and brown paper bags from the A&P grocery store can take you . . . (Thanks, Mom.)

My creative and scholarly research has evolved out of an ongoing interest in effort, achievement, and the ethics of irresolvability. Working across disciplines, I focus on the ways in which material and procedural conditions define form and content. Specific gestures have a certain kind of power, and within my work there is a casual and undemanding level of agency, suggestive of an inherent struggle against the pressures of success and a knowing resignation that comes with always falling short.

My recent work is a meditation on the Black male experience. I challenge stereotypes of Black masculinity by presenting allegorical narratives in the aesthetic of the hairstyle-guide posters commonly found in Black barbershops. The individuals depicted in these posters tend to be anonymous, identified only by number. By borrowing these images, I hope to inspire young Black men to break with harmful conventions of representation and see themselves in their own individuality—as more than a number.

In recent years, I have used the politically charged topic of war as a point of entry into conversations about power, gender, and memory. I gravitate toward materials that are common in everyday domestic life and, through a simple repetitive process of counting, transform them into memorials for the war dead. The ephemeral and delicate nature of the work stands in contrast to the hypermasculine monolithic forms of marble and stone often associated with memorials.

I recontextualize imagery in order to relay a fresh sense of emotion or sincerity, often by combining poetic language with nostalgic cartoons in my paintings. I find that the language of memes uses a similar formula with comedic effect. My interest in humor comes from its potential underlying seriousness, which can disrupt convention, activate repressed emotions and impulses, and address fears of alienation, displacement, and related anxieties. Cartoons are often abstracted representations of humanity, an ambiguous representation of actions and

Wish upon a Star is an ongoing series of over one hundred paintings that represent objects within a field of color. The paintings are made by placing found objects on top of magazine images of “dream things”: beautiful items, exotic trips, idealized houses void of dust or clutter. Paint is then sprayed across the page and around the object. The pigmented mist moves like light, ultimately stopping where the object meets the page. The result shows impact where the object and image touch, a gradation of shade where the shape of the object can be sensed, in contrast

As an artist I am inspired by the relationship between human emotion and our natural environment. I often choose subject matter based on life experiences that have been humbling and sometimes traumatic. The psychological elements of my paintings are generated by personal and emotional responses to people, places, and things. Recent works draw inspiration from historical photography of the Civil Rights movement, and, through the use of color and gesture, offer a contemporary response to social and political issues of the past and present.

The title of this series of paintings, Flash Cocotte, roughly translates as “Fast tart.” Advertised on social media sites, flash cocottes are pop-up parties for queer and gender-flexible people. I appropriate existing images sourced from disco, private Tumblr accounts, and late ’70s–early ’80s “tomboys” that have informed my identity and sense of self. I further queer these images by a creating a type of reassembled painting, one that combines the masculine and the feminine. I explore micro expressions, gender play, and the simple heartfelt abandon one feels on a dance floor. This physical

My work gives form to fleeting memories and the suppressed mania crawling beneath the carpet of the western home. These images recount crisis and triumph, momentum and confinement, lust and low-altitude bombing. Finding stillness in the recording of arguments within the process of painting and drawing, I return to my childhood freezer filled with popsicles and secret passageways.