When Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote those words, he captured the precise catalyst for my work. As an artist, I believe that the greatest ally of systemic injustice isn't just hatred—it’s shrouding. It’s the collective, polite agreement to look away, to insist that the ghosts of our past have been laid to rest, and to claim that we are "over" the ideologies that built the very ground we stand on.

My series, American Woman, is designed to strip away that luxury of looking away. By juxtaposing the kitsch, idealized allure of pin-up culture with the visceral, haunting reality of lynching, I am pulling the invisible into the light. I often think about the "safety" of traditional subjects. If I spent my days painting flowers or serene landscapes, the world would likely offer me a quiet nod of approval. People would look at the canvas and say, "That’s a nice painting." They would move on with their coffee, their pulse unchanged, their worldview unchallenged. But a nice painting doesn't spark a revolution of the mind. A decorative piece doesn't force a conversation about the racist practices and beliefs that continue to breathe beneath the surface of our modern institutions. To me, "nice" is a dead end. I choose to put these images "in your face" because we live in a culture of denial. There is a persistent narrative that racist ideologies are relics of a bygone era—that they are "beyond us." But you cannot heal a wound that you refuse to acknowledge is still bleeding.

By using the pin-up aesthetic—a symbol of American desire and "innocence"—and colliding it with the imagery of racial terror, I am creating a visual friction that is impossible to ignore. I want to provoke:

I am not interested in creating art that provides an escape. I am interested in creating art that provides a reckoning. If my work makes you uncomfortable, it is because it mirrors a reality far more uncomfortable than any canvas could ever be. I paint what I paint so that we can no longer pretend to be blind.