The People Who Stayed With Me
On art, influence, and the things that leave a mark
A sentence in a novel can stay with me for years. A song can stir something I didn't realize I'd been carrying. A photograph, a film, an act of resistance, a conversation, or even a moment of extraordinary kindness can change how I look at something I've seen a thousand times.
Sometimes those influences are obvious in my work. Other times, they're buried beneath layers of color, texture, shapes, and marks. They may not be recognizable to anyone looking at the finished piece, but they're there.
My art is informed by my experiences--good, bad, and seemingly insignificant--as a Black girl and a Black woman, by decades of advocacy, by the communities that shaped me, and by the people who taught me to question what we're told is normal, acceptable, beautiful, or possible.
But it's also informed by laughter, love, curiosity, family, music, memories, and the simple pleasure of making something with my hands.
Not everything I create is a statement about injustice. Sometimes I just want to celebrate something beautiful. Sometimes I want to explore a color, make a mess, or see what happens when I put one material next to or on top of another.
And sometimes I want to say something that isn't particularly comfortable.
All of that belongs in my studio.
I don't believe art has to be complicated or intimidating to be meaningful. And I certainly don't believe inspiration belongs exclusively to people with formal training or a particular kind of creative talent.
Art can make us laugh, grieve, question, remember, celebrate, or feel something we can't quite put into words. It can be quiet. It can be loud. It can be beautiful and unsettling at the same time.
That's part of what makes it so extraordinary.
So, who has stayed with you?
Not necessarily your favorite artist, writer, or musician. I'm talking about the people who have left something behind in you.
Maybe it's someone famous. Maybe it's a grandparent, a teacher, a neighbor, or somebody you met once and never saw again.
Maybe it wasn't even a person. Maybe it was a place, an experience, a book, a melody, or something you witnessed that forever changed the way you understood the world.
Who made you think differently? Who made you question something you had always accepted? Who showed you a possibility you hadn't imagined for yourself? Who made you laugh when you desperately needed it? Who made you interrogate your privilege and how you demonstrate your humanity? Who demonstrated the kind of courage you hoped you could find in yourself?
And how much of what they gave you still shows up in the way you move through the world?
I think there's something wonderful about taking inventory of those influences. Not to put them in neat little categories or rank them by importance, but simply to recognize how much of our perspective is shaped by what we've encountered along the way.
We carry those influences into everything we do, whether we're painting, writing, cooking, gardening, raising children, solving problems, or just trying to figure out how to exist in this complicated world. And adulting? The marketing was strong for that phase of life--I want a refund...LOL.
For me, creating art is one way of making sense of it all.
So when you see my work, you're seeing more than paint on a canvas, more than pasted paper and found objects. You're seeing little pieces of the people, ideas, experiences, and moments that have stayed with me.
Some you'll recognize. Some you won't. And that's perfectly fine. I bring my perspective to the work, but you bring yours, too. What you see and feel may be entirely different from what I intended. I love that about art.
That's what I hope you'll find when you spend time in my studio, whether you're visiting in person or exploring my work online. You're welcome to see the world through my eyes for a moment, and just as welcome to discover something that speaks to your own experience.
Because art really is everywhere. Sometimes we just have to expand our imaginations enough to recognize it.
And if a guy with a magnificent head of hair, a paintbrush, and a few happy little trees helped me understand that, well, I'd say that's a pretty wonderful influence to carry.
When I think about the people who have influenced my art, some of the first names that come to mind aren't visual artists at all. They're poets, writers, musicians, activists, actors, filmmakers, and people who refused to accept the world as it was handed to them.
And then there's Bob Ross.
Yes, that Bob Ross. The soft-spoken guy with the magnificent hair who painted happy little trees on PBS.
I grew up in the 1980s, when our television options were pretty limited. We had ABC, NBC, CBS, another local station, and PBS. Cable television didn't enter my life until I moved out on my own in the early '90s. So I watched a lot of PBS, and somewhere along the way, I discovered The Joy of Painting.
I was fascinated. I still am.
To this day, I binge-watch Bob Ross. Years ago, an ex-boyfriend thought I was absolutely out of my mind when I turned on The Joy of Painting while we were lying in bed. I think his reaction was something along the lines of, "What the hell are we watching?" One episode later, he was hooked. Watching Bob Ross became our thing.
There was something mesmerizing about watching a painting emerge from what looked like a few random strokes of a brush or a swipe of a palette knife. And Bob made it feel possible. He wasn't particularly concerned with making everything perfect. He invited people to try, experiment, make mistakes, and discover what might happen along the way.
I loved that. I still do.
When I watched the documentary about his life, I was saddened by parts of his story, but seeing more of the person behind the easel only deepened my appreciation for him.
And while my art looks nothing like his, there's a little Bob Ross in my studio. He's been there for decades.
But my influences don't stop in the studio.
Maya Angelou. Nikki Giovanni. Langston Hughes.
Alice Walker. Toni Morrison. Zora Neale Hurston. Octavia E. Butler. James Baldwin. Terry McMillan.
Assata Shakur. Angela Davis. Malcolm X. Nat Turner. Muhammad Ali.
Nina Simone. Billie Holiday. Aretha Franklin. Eartha Kitt. Harry Belafonte. Paul Robeson. Prince.
Spike Lee. Paul Mooney. X-Clan. Public Enemy. KRS-One.
Not to mention the elders in my life: my mother, Gwen, my Aunt Queen, Pam Riley, Ouida Daniels, Mel Gravely, my teachers Terri Phillips (RIP) and Johnnie Houston (RIP), and so many more famous and not so famous people.
I didn't have to sit down and research those names. They came to me because they're already there, occupying space in my head, in my thinking, and in how I see the world. Some have been there since my social justice journey was activated in the late 80s. Others found their way in later.
They touched a space in me and held on.
That's not to suggest that the people I haven't named were any less important or influential. If I sat down and tried to make a complete list, I could probably fill pages. And I'd still forget somebody.
The point isn't the list. It's what these people left behind in me.
Their words. Their humor. Their music. Their defiance. Their willingness to tell uncomfortable truths. Their refusal to make themselves smaller to accommodate other people's comfort.
They were unapologetic.
Not all in the same way, of course. Some challenged the world through literature or music. Others used protest, political organizing, public confrontation, or deliberate refusal. Some paid extraordinarily high prices for their convictions, including their lives.
What has always stayed with me is the courage it took to have a vision and follow it through, especially when the consequences were for real--there was no "opting out" for them.
I don't have to agree with every decision they made or every word they spoke to recognize the mark they left on me.
And I don't have to paint their portraits for their influence to find its way into my art.
Art is everywhere. And so is inspiration.
I think we sometimes limit our understanding of artistic influence by looking only at people who do what we do.
Painters study painters. Writers study writers. Musicians study musicians.
There's certainly value in that. I learn from other visual artists, too.
But some of the most meaningful influences on my work have come from people who never picked up a paintbrush (at least to my knowledge).