This week I’m the featured artist interview on the Visionary Art Collective website.
Romare Bearden has had the most serious impact because his work demonstrates the incredible extent and scale that we can take collage. I am also an admirer of Kara Walker, Wangechi Mutu and Kerry James Marshall because of their striking use of the figurative in their visual storytelling. But a lot of the imagery that comes to play in my work has been inspired by words, sometimes my own, but also Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Cheryl Clarke, Zora Neale Hurston, Paule Marshall, June Jordan, the list goes on and on. There is always something flourishing and gushing in their novels, poems, and theories. It is intense, vibrant, forceful, impactful and not always what it seems to be on first read or listen. There are layers and depths to the writings of these women, and in their own way, they are making collages too.