I have a well-documented history of trouble with intimacy.
I needed to create something I could take with me wherever I went.
I kept wanting to push my image as validity; I wanted to see my portrait on a wall and know it was okay.
Being a black artist, the first thing people want to talk about is your blackness, the importance of your blackness, and your black presence.
Where some may see flat, static narratives, I see a spectrum of tonal gradations and realities. What I am creating is literally black portraiture with ballpoint pen ink. I'm looking for that in-between state in an individual where the overarching definition is lost. Skin as geography is the terrain I expand by emphasizing the specificity of blackness, where an individual’s subjectivity, various realities and experiences can be drawn onto the diverse topography of the epidermis. From there, the possibilities of portraying a fully-fledged person are endless.
It is hard to produce work in New York. You kind of have to center yourself - do some Zen meditation exercises and just focus. It is very distracting, and money, of course, is an issue.
The graphic style itself is influenced by a lot of very layered and detailed comics that I read as a kid, like Vagabond by Takehiko Inoue.
Over the near term there is clearly the opportunity to work with Microsoft to do to a better job of creating a more secure Windows experience for users around the world.
I can buy and sell any of these people who are always criticizing me.
When I see a cow, it is not an animal to eat, it is a poem of pity for me and I worship it and I shall defend its worship against the whole world.
Keep your relationships brief. Don’t let them in. Once they’re inside they have more potential to hurt you. Comfort yourself. You can live with the anguish as long as it only involves yourself. As long as there is no hope.