Coming Soon
Strange Fruit
Southern trees bear strange fruit Blood on the leaves and blood at the root Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant south The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh Then the sudden smell of burning flesh
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop Here is a strange and bitter crop
As an African-American artist, I have always been in confrontation with the ghosts that refuse to stay buried. My offering, American Woman: A Pin-Up Lynching Series, is my attempt at mapping the intersection of the "spectacle" and the "silence." Strange Fruit, presented here, is where these two worlds finally collide— a massive, visceral ledger of the lives we are told to forget.
This Black woman, nude and staring directly into the viewer’s conscience. She is bound in the intricate, aesthetic knots of Japanese Shibari rope fetish, with a noose tightening around her neck. Her legs are spread open—a position of ultimate, radical vulnerability that invokes the long, horrific history of sexual violence that has always accompanied the act of lynching in this country. I have stated whenever asked about the nudity in my pieces that I am not interested in painting naked women for the sake of erotica; with that being understood, the other elements contained in each painting are equally important to the overall message of the piece. In this case, the background is where the "official" lie lives.
Encased within a massive Rorschach inkblot is the image of a lynched Black man For me, the Rorschach is the perfect metaphor for what attorney Jill Collen Jefferson calls "deliberate misclassification" in her 2026 book, A Crimson Record. When a Black body is found hanging from a tree in 21st-century America, the state looks at the scene and chooses to see a "suicide." Like a Rorschach test, they project a narrative that fits their comfort, ignoring the jagged, murderous truth hidden within the ink.
Across the skin of this canvas, I have inscribed the names. These are not just statistics from a report; they are the evidence of a 25-year war on Black life that the history books claim ended decades ago. The names Raynard Johnson, Nick Naylor, and Frederick Jermaine Carter. Are crucial bullet points along with the names of Otis Byrd, Willie Andrew Jones Jr., and Deondrey Montreal Hopkins, Trevonte Shubert-Helton, Tory Medley, and the Delta State student Demartravion "Trey" Reed. By placing these men’s names alongside a woman bound in a "fetishized" rope, I am hoping that the viewer asks a pointed question: When did our trauma become an aesthetic? Has society learned to "dress up" the noose, to make it look like something else—an accident, a mental health crisis, or a "personal choice"—while the physical reality remains a body bound and broken. Strange Fruit stands six and a half feet tall because you cannot look down on this truth. You must stand eye-to-eye with it. The painting suggests that while the era of the postcard and the cheering mob may be over, the "Crimson Record" is still being written in real time. We are living in a loop where the more things change, the more they stay the same. The rope has been rebranded, but the knot is still tied by the same hands of systemic indifference.
I am painting this because if the state insists on calling these murders "suicides," ...
WHY AMERICAN WOMAN: A LYNCHING SERIES
WHY AMERICAN WOMAN: A LYNCHING SERIES
Her body is the canvas, mocha hues, set against her country’s red, white, and blue backdrop, telling our story for generations.
I’ve always been a fan of pin-up art and erotica and have been greatly moved and inspired by the works of artists like Alberto Vargas, Gil Elvgren, and Hajime Sorayama. However, for as long as pin-up has existed as an American art form, few images have focused on Black women, and none of the few illustrations merged historical elements into their compositions. Painting nude or semi-nude women does not interest me in and of itself. Painting “pin-up” art of Black women had to be about more than “Look, white artists do it. I can do it, too.” The traditional phrase “pin-up” and its close relationship to the word “lynching” was too enticing to be ignored. Hence, the series appellation. The word “lynching” redacts the word pin-up in my mind and so is reflected in the series logo. Between the years 1882 and 1968, 3,446 Blacks and 1,297 whites were lynched. Lynching typically involved extreme brutalities such as torture, mutilation, decapitation, immolation, and desecration.
Why a lynching series? What could I possibly be attempting to do? Idealistically, there are several things I hope my series will address. Using the Black female body as a totem for issues that have faced the larger African-American community; hopefully, forcing candid conversations about racial inequities is my intent. The Black woman, having internalized a foreign value system and attempting to imitate her white counterpart, becomes a distortion of herself. Highlighting an appreciation of Black beauty that might manifest in the abandonment of fake fingernails, false eyelashes, and the wearing, weaving, and gluing of hair from other ethnicities onto their heads would be ideal.
Also, I wish to reconsider the cultural origins of presenting the Black woman as “strong and independent,” brimming with a “combative attitude,” and how that stereotype has sometimes benefited and simultaneously harmed her image. The artistic merging of social/political and historical elements and the African-American female form elevates the works beyond pastiche.
Lastly, white men who appreciate the erotic nature of these paintings and are attracted to African-American women should consider these visual offerings an opportunity to experience a reckoning with the social-historical components that combine to make up what they find alluring.
This is the ideological approach to my “pin-up” art and, for me, separates my work from pornography. Truth is the goal; the Black female form is the vehicle by which larger, more complex, honest conversations about race may be sparked.
