“As a painter, I seek out processes that challenge my instincts, pushing me into unfamiliar territory. While I’ve explored printmaking before, monotype printing is new to me, and I approached it as a way to gain fresh insight on my already existing body of work - both technically and thematically. This series expands on the ideas already central to my work: figures caught between thought and action, between presence and absence, between freedom and its constraints.

The performance of Blackness often exists in the space of the hypermundane. I want to challenge the idea that Black life is always marked by spectacle, trauma, or resistance. Can people recognize the weight and significance of an everyday Black household? Two children sitting on a couch, watching television or a scene of siblings playing outside while their mother rests in another room? The most radical thing, perhaps, is that freedom - true freedom - is profoundly ordinary. Marginalized people often inhabit two worlds at once: those of freedom and non-freedom, belonging and exclusion. My work lingers in that tension, in the quiet moments where both realities exist simultaneously.

Monotype printmaking has allowed me to see these themes through a new lens. The process itself mirrors the dualities in my work - the push and pull between control and unpredictability, structure and spontaneity. I’ve always valued the presence of the hand in my work, the tangible mark of the artist. But with monotype, there’s an unpredictable element that disrupts control in an interesting way. The process is layered - you begin with a first print, then you make a ghost print, and then you build upon it, adding paint where it feels right. The original print often transforms, through this layering process. There’s an inherent playfulness to making these monotypes, which mirrors how I approach my practice as a whole: stepping in without rigid expectations, allowing the work to unfold naturally. I want the movement and physicality of my painting to be present in these prints, the immediacy of the gesture translating into something both raw and intentional. I believe that there’s a freedom in not knowing exactly where a piece I’m making will land. I strive to be humbled by my work, to allow uncertainty to shape the outcome. It’s in that space - between knowing and unknowing - that the most meaningful moments emerge.”