New Series in the Making:  "The Misconception of Perception"

 

Artist Statement:  The work is a collection of small paintings, detailed portraits of Black men, women, and children.  The work engages the viewer and examines various social, spiritual, psychological, and ancestral connections that affect the Black community.  The work also allows a mass audience the opportunity to view and perceive Black subjects, who are more commonly looked upon as an "other" in society, in a more humane way.

 

The pieces are small in this series, ranging from ACEO size (2.5" x 3.5") to 12" x 12" and a variety of sizes in between that are meant to intimately explore the juxtaposition of what people call "aggressive" or "negative" expressions to more positive adjectives such as unity, strength, confidence, and ingenuity, adjectives that are not commonly displayed in mass media regarding Black people.

 

This series explores the Black man, woman, and child in a monochromatic color scheme, representing the idea of "Black and white and all shades of gray in between," exploring the varying facets of human emotions, characteristics, and tendencies.  We are not merely caricatures or stereotypes that are continuously perpetuated in society that are projected onto us consciously and subconsciously.  Our image is rarely seen and when it is it is rarely from a positive perspective.  We are reduced to punchlines and caricatures of stereotypes that affect the way people interact with us from the time we are born until we die, even the way we interact with each other. 

 

From youth to adulthood, the scrutiny that a Black man faces, for example, even for something as benign as an unsmiling, neutral expression, comes with a price.  "He's aggressive." "I thought he was going to attack me."  From people holding their bags tighter to themselves as they pass by a Black man to cops stopping them just because (or excessive cop presence for simple offenses such as jaywalking), Black men are constantly vilified in this society.  The overkill of Ferguson youth Michael Brown is yet another example. 

 

All unsmiling Black women are not "angry."  A young Black child isn't really more knowing in the ways of the world than their white counterparts.  In Teaching Black Girls:  Resiliency in Urban Classrooms by Venus E. Evans-Winters writes on the relationship between Black girls and white teachers: "...teachers are more likely to perceive their Black female students as socially mature and White female students as intellectually competent."  This largely affects the way they are taught due to PERCEPTIONS rather than the reality of who they really are.   Where does that place their knowledge, capabilities, or brilliance when they are not approached with that expectation?  Black males suffer even more under the constant misconceptions of their teachers in their school experiences.  It all boils down to the misconceptions of perception that continuously perpetuates itself within society.

 

Smiling faces won't do.  Smiling faces lull those into a false sense of security, both the smiler and those who view the smile.  "I'm safe.  You can trust me."  Many smiling faces throughout history have come bearing gifts and wielding guns, ropes, knives and other weapons of brutality.  I am interested in more genuine forms of expression not those of lies and deceit.

 

"Images of goodness do not control the world, but images of power do. We'd need both goodness and power...Our job...will be to destroy the adverse images and to create true images for our people and the world. We are to use images, and be the images, that reflect what we need to move us as a nation of Black people." Don L. Lee 1970