Visionary Art Collective Featured Artist Interview

This week I’m the featured artist interview on the Visionary Art Collective website.

In the conversation, I reflect on how collage became my primary mode of expression and how my creative process continues to evolve. We also talk about my artistic influences, from Romare Bearden—whose improvisational technique and visual scale helped define the potential of collage for me—to contemporary artists like Kara Walker, Wangechi Mutu, and Kerry James Marshall, all of whom use the figure powerfully in their visual storytelling.

But beyond visual artists, I’ve long drawn inspiration from the voices of Black women writers. Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Cheryl Clarke, Zora Neale Hurston, Paule Marshall, and June Jordan are ever-present figures in my studio. Their work pulses with richness and, much like collage, their language folds in on itself, concealing and revealing, always asking the reader to look again. There’s something about their syntax, their lyricism, and their power that influences how I build my images. It’s not just the content, but the structure of their storytelling — how something raw can also be layered, how beauty and complexity can co-exist. In many ways, these writers are making collages too.

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.  

In the interview, I also share insights into how I think about the body, Black womanhood, and the balance between abstraction and legibility in my work. It was a pleasure to reflect on how my practice continues to shift as I remain in conversation with these creative lineages.

Read the full interview here.