‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ Painting

I am a young Franco-Jamaican artist based in London who first came to painting through music. I have always been heavily into jazz and I find the two art forms inexorably intertwined but ultimately, I needed another channel, besides music, to express my artistic sensibility. When I was first introduced to Basquiat, I saw how he was able to capture the essence of jazz and translate it from just a sonic experience into a visual one. This greatly inspired me. I am completely self- taught, but have, from an early age been exposed to a wide variety of art through my parents who both work in the arts, my mother, as a Curator and father, a photographer. They introduced me to the endless perspectives and visions of some of the artists that inspire me to explore this medium and see the connections between the different art forms. My practice deals with the underrepresentation of black figures in paintings but contradict the traditional narrative, putting them against very flamboyant backdrops while still telling the story of the racial struggle and the inequality. I use many shades of blues, browns and black to show the multitude and complexity of layers and depth to their story, unique and individual to each character. Taking inspiration from the subjects in a lot of my fathers work, Dennis Morris as well as those in the works of photographers such as, Gordon Parks, Malik Sadibe, Seydou Keita and many others. Other influences have originated from black exploitation/ foreign movies, old record sleeves and literature (from Baldwin to James Mcbride). More specifically I’m very heavily influenced from the 60’s/70’s era. I fell in love with that time through the music that originated then, but later delved deeper into the design and art that also emerged in this time. It was a time of so much experimentation with no limits or boundaries to what you could create. A recurring theme in a lot of my work is playing on the idea of Monachopsis, ‘feeling like you don’t belong anywhere’ so I created this surreal, version of the world. A version that juxtaposes the brutality and unfairness of the world against these very vibrant beautiful and opulent colours and textures. I play around with textures a lot to make it really feel like you’ve been immersed into the scene I have created. I use a lot of lines that connect to each other in some loose way or form, transporting you from one section of my painting to another.