Statement of Practice - What I do
I am a woman of the African Diaspora, inspired by nature, landscape and place, by earth-energy and spirit. I collect memories of place, including the internal landscape of the spirit and I paint and create abstractly. I believe in the interconnectedness of all things in nature. I use shapes and colors from the land and nature, textures from the clouds, and gestures that mimic marks on the earth, to explore my notion of home and place. I collect items that hold meaning for me for use in my process - crystals and minerals, bones, shells, wood and roots and other fragments and found objects. I draw, paint, collage, take photos and write. I gather all these things in my studio and I begin to “cook” them - adding shapes, colors and layers, removing them - scratching and scraping through layers to reveal what is hidden. I rearrange elements, relate them to one another, edit them, deconstruct them and meditate on them. In my art, with my language of abstraction, I try to invoke a memory of place, or of an experience, or a remembered ritual, in order to create a home- an ancestral space, that is a healing space. In fact, my practice is a series of rituals and meditations.
I usually work in series centered around a physical place, or the feelings and energy that a certain place or nature evokes. When I paint, I usually work in oils. The physicality of pigments in an oil based medium further connects me with the earth and the land. But I will paint in any medium. While painting, I will also work on several collages at the same time- not as sketches or a plan for the painting, but to create a “conversation." Often, I plan to paint diptychs and triptychs. But sometimes, I will be working on a painting, and I will just need to expand the space, so I add on another canvas. If I have taken photos of a place, I may refer to them as I paint to refresh my connection and the feelings I had felt. I might also refer to watercolor paintings I did on site or I might have written something about a place. With my sources and materials around me in my studio, I then try to step into the flow, and begin to have a conversation with the work. It is an intuitive process- not pre-planned or mapped out.
I also make ritual objects, like many African and other indigenous cultures have created, which I then use for healing purposes and to create and hold my ancestral home. Ritual plays an important part in cementing the spiritual ties I feel to the African Diaspora. I conduct research before and during the making of my artwork. My library is on one end of my studio and I have many books and catalogues that I have collected over the years. I consult reference materials on jewelry and adornment, and art and ceremonial objects, such as masks, other sculptural forms and also refer to historical and anthropological materials. I reference across different cultures and belief systems ( i.e. African, Asian - including Tibetan, Native American, Latin American), and look for similarities amongst cultures which provide the opportunities for conversation. I have an entire wall of books on different cultures, religions and belief systems and their artistic expressions. Because of the richness of the many different cultures, my ritual objects are often informed not only by African cultural traditions, but also by indigenous cultures and other cultures of color around the globe.
At present, the primary material for my sculptural pieces is wood and the roots of desert plants and trees that I have collected. These materials are critical to the work, as they carry the energy of the place and a broader memory that connects to many shared experiences. Years before I began working on the small sculptural pieces, I was studying the history of African, and African Diaspora ritual objects, masks, and carvings of several cultures (Yoruba, Baule, Bambara, Dan and others). I also studied the impact of colonization on those objects and their makers, and the treatment of those objects, in Africa and the African Diaspora. I also collected and read materials on other indigenous artifacts and practices. My ritual objects are in the lineage of the African Diaspora, but also include other influences. I have collected African art objects and other cultural objects for decades and I honor the spirits as my ancestors and mentors. But many of my materials and my references to nature come from where I live- in the desert landscape, the mountainous terrain and the endless skies of New Mexico.
While my artistic expression moves through different media, it is very much part of the same practice. My collages are materials that I use to inform my painting practice. But they are also a body of work that tells their own related part of my journey to find place and home. During Covid times, I began digging into my family genealogy and that has migrated into my collage work. My writings have been a constant companion in my life, and much like my art, it’s just what I do.
Abstraction is a universal language that speaks through color, form, line, gesture and texture and has served spiritual, magical and ritual purposes since the beginning of time. Like the shaman, I go inward and journey to retrieve and reinterpret universal truths, revealing them to those who are willing to receive.
Statement of Practice - why i do it
As a Black woman in America, I am part of the African Diaspora, which most commonly refers to the descendants of the West and Central Africans who were enslaved and shipped to the Americas via the Atlantic slave trade between the 16th and 19th centuries. We are familiar with the narrative that, we, in the African Diaspora, were ripped from our homelands and suffered under brutal conditions, including the trans-Atlantic Middle passage, slavery, segregation and continuing racism. We are constantly told that we are from elsewhere and nowhere- that we are dispossessed, even though we have deeper roots in America than most European immigrants.
My artwork springs from another narrative. It is the story about the strength, beauty, resilience and spiritual transcendence that has been accreted, developed, accumulated and passed down through generations across the African Diaspora. Rituals form the basis of belief and belonging and provide reverence for the healing power that supports that store of strength, beauty, resilience and spiritual transcendence alive today in the African Diaspora. My connection to that strength and to memories of landscape, sacred nature and beauty have allowed me to process negative energies into transformational beauty through my artwork.
So, I carry my ancestral home with me, and access it and share it, through my work. I carry those memories of nature, landscape and spiritual energy in a place that is not physical. The openness of the space and sky, the denseness and the ephemeral nature of the clouds, the many textures and forms of the flora and fauna and the rocks and mountains of New Mexico, speak the spirit of the Land and open the passageway to my ancestral home. I explore the search for home and healing through an imaginal relationship with nature and landscape.
My art asks the viewer to throw themselves into the unknown and “jump off the diving board and invent the water on the way down”, and spend some time connecting to the landscape of the spirit, to touch that part of their home, their landscape, that is not owned by anyone, can’t be stolen, has no borders, is everywhere and nowhere, and which is accessed through the power and strength of beauty found in color, shape, line and texture.