Dear Old Nia.. Explained

"Dear Old Nia" captures the reconciliation between my present self and my teenage self, a moment of healing and connection that I’ve often longed for. This piece is about self-evolution—a theme that resonates deeply within me—as I reflect on my journey of growth and healing.

click the picture below to purchase the print.

In the background, I’ve included elements from my past: old photos, shows, and albums I once loved, objects from my room, the painting "To Cry Rivers and Oceans," and even my mask from the painting "Girl Behind the Mask." These items are markers of the challenges I’ve faced, visual reminders of the wounds that, though healed, have left scars. 

Reference to "To Cry Rivers and Oceans," below.

Reference to "Girl Behind the Mask." below.

The dialogue between the two figures reinforces the importance of continuity and self-compassion. I spent far too long beating myself up for the mistakes I made as a teenager when in reality I was young and just learning how to do everything. I needed grace. I needed someone in my life to tell me that I wasn’t too much, that I wasn’t too weird, and that I was fine as is. I needed someone to see me.

On top of that, I wanted this piece to deeply reflect how being a weird Black girl can oftentimes be an isolating experience. When it came to growing up in Ohio, I went to predominantly Black schools and I was made fun of for being outside the bounds of what “Blackness” looked like to my Black peers. To be from Compton, to have a father who was in and out of prison, to like poetry and art, to wear eccentric clothes and do outlandish makeup wasn’t within the bounds of the preferred Blackness to my peers. Out there every Black person’s parents went to college, everyone played sports, everyone had logical dreams, had clean-cut and natural-colored hair, and everyone wore things like Jordans, ripped jeans, and maybe a graphic t-shirt. That was what respectable Blackness looked like to the collective. 

It seemed like individuality was a rebellion against being Black which ultimately was preventing us as a collective from autonomy, from existing as a spectrum. It seemed like throughout history  and present-day time we always saw Blackness as a confinement and never something that we could exist freely within the context of. I was weird, I was into Paramore, I loved having funky-colored hair, but I never saw myself as anything other than Black. I was existing and exploring my identity as an African American.

Overall, the piece is a poignant exploration of identity, growth, and the tender act of caring for one’s past, making it not just a self-portrait, but a visual narrative that invites others to consider their own journeys of self-acceptance.

click the picture below to purchase the print.

Finding Yourself in Wonderland

As a young girl, I always imagined myself older. The way I’d look, the way I dressed, and what I would do as my career. 

As a 23 year old woman all I want to do now is reconnect with that little girl. I wonder oftentimes if I live up to what I wanted to be. 

I made this piece not knowing how I wanted it to turn out, but I knew what I wanted it to say. A multitude of things. 

I am just a woman, 23, always burdened with the feeling that if I am not spending every minute of my life working toward my success that I am a failure.

Always feeling like I am running out of time if I don’t accomplish everything by 25. 

Always feeling not enough, because of the wounds carved into me as a little girl that would just scab and then get reopened by everyone else until I was old enough to internalize those things and inflict that pain on myself.

and now that I am older, I do everything in my power to reverse that trauma. To nurture those wounds from my younger years.

To speak life into that little girl, to do the things she enjoyed, to live in the worlds she created.

Like Alice in Wonderland (the live-action).

as a child, I always watched these wacky movies. Shark Boy and Lava Girl, Spy Kids, any princess movie, Coraline, and Alice in Wonderland (both movies). I loved the most insane and visually stimulating things. 

as I got older I began to escape there. 

Escaping became my way of living. I smoked. I read books. I watched my familiar shows to develop a sense of consistency and comfort in my life. I drew pictures. I painted. I lied. I couldn’t decipher my dreams and the days I lived in. I curated my own world within isolation. I found comfort within my mind and away from others. I found comfort in taking surface-level care of that little wounded girl that still lived inside me.

 And maybe getting sick put things into perspective, or maybe my period of doing nothing forced me to face myself, but I realized that my ambition, my surface-level self-care, my indulging in the media I loved as a child wasn’t healing me. It was pacifying me. 

So the little girl, she looks up to me because I am everything I always wanted to be. 

And just like how the little girl couldn’t understand why the older women in her life were never satisfied with who they were (because she always wanted to be like them), she cannot fathom why she got older and is now placing myself within that same pattern. 

Because the older version of herself is everything the little girl always wanted to be.

She is beautiful, she is kind, she is loved, she is successful, she is helpful, she is stylish, she is intelligent, she is talented, and she is so many things that it would just be conceited to name them all. 

And the little girl just hopes that one day the older version of herself will stop looking at that clock and look at her and realize that she is already everything, and there is nothing to fix, or improve. 

That she is already perfect, that she is already worthy, that she is perfectly made in the image of God, and that anyone who says differently is a liar.

(Because nobody is more honest about being impressed than a six-year-old).

Tryna Find Peace of Mind... Explained

Inspired by Tupac's "So Many Tears."

Tupac speaks vulnerably about the struggles of inner-city life for a Black male. Specifically the first few bars, "Back in elementary,

I thrived on misery

Left me alone, 

I grew up amongst a dyin' breed

Inside my mind,

couldn't find a place to rest

Until I got that Thug Life tatted on my chest."

Then, in another part of the song, he says, "Take me away from all the pressure, and all the pain

Show me some happiness again, 

I'm goin' blind

I spend my time in this cell, ain't livin' well

I know my destiny is Hell, where did I fail?

My life is in denial, and when I die

Baptized in eternal fire, 

I'll shed so many tears."

And later he says," Now I'm Lost and I'm weary,

So many tears,

I'm suicidal so don't stand near me

My every move is a calculated step,

to bring me closer to embracing an early death."

In simpler terms, Tupac is saying that since he was a child he felt the burdens of sadness and loneliness, as he had to become accustomed to death early on. Due to this, his mind was in constant turmoil until he felt a sense of belonging when he joined a gang.

In the present day, he is begging to be taken away from the pain he struggles with as a consequence of this lifestyle he chose. As he recognizes the lifestyle he lives is morally incorrect, he wonders where in his life did he go wrong to be on this path. Yet in still he hopes that something cleanses him of his great sins and he can rejoin God when it is his time.

These words reminded me of a section in the book  "Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome" where the author, Joy DeGruy, wrote about how Black men in these conditions indirectly commit suicide to escape their lives because depression and suicide are socially unacceptable. And when you stand back and examine the optics, gang life is inherently suicidal and traumatizing.

Oftentimes when discussing Black liberation we see gang life as something that is harmful to our livelihood and has ruined our progress-- and I agree. But I also feel that we rarely see the nuance of the issue at hand. We rarely examine this issue as an intentional symptom of our history.

So I made this piece, with the desire to highlight a story untold within the fine arts space. I wanted to provide nuance to a topic that, to my knowledge, has always been Black and White. I wanted to provide a voice for someone that I may know, someone that you may know but may not understand.

 I am not here to glorify a lifestyle that causes harm or frame all Black people as victims of our history, but I am aiming to add perspective. To add compassion and empathy.

When I look at people part of this lifestyle, who grew up in it I see people "trapped inside a ghetto maze," as my mom would say. I see people institutionalized, mentally and physically. 

I would ask myself what the world expected of people without a solid family structure. People who are surrounded by death so much so, that they are desensitized to it. People who are without a loving community? Without money to get by? Without the opportunity to physically escape? Is it that hard to realize that the family and community missing from one's life are then supplemented by belonging to a gang? Why is it that we can examine the psychological effects of the trauma of slavery in every other subject but this one? Why are we so unwilling to love, support, and help those within this environment? What made us abandon collectivism?

With this painting, I wanted to represent a boy who grew up in a warzone. A boy who becomes a part of this war, as he knows nothing else. A boy who wishes to be free but does not know how to free himself, or at least doesn't have the resources to.

So, how does he escape? Does he walk over the corpses and risk getting shot? Does he ignore his own wound? Does he duck? Does he shoot back? Does he pick a side in a never-ending war? Where does he go to reach peace? How does he make it out when he's already in this deep?

Rarely do we comprehend that most people are a product of their environment, and sometimes do not have the strength to persevere. Sometimes, surviving and even assimilating is all the persevering one can do on their own. 

So I have him standing strong, even if he is hurt. He is surviving within an environment designed to kill him, still wanting peace of mind, just as our ancestors did in the past. Just as we do every day.

I have compassion for him because I didn't grow up in that environment, but I know people who did. I talked to people who did, I love people who did. And this lifestyle isn't as simple as a decision.

I just believe that his story matters.

And one day, I hope to help this issue beyond painting a picture.