"I have never felt that one material should have to do all the work."
MIXED MEDIA
STIRRING UP
THE COLOR
Mixed Media: Stirring Up the Colors celebrates energy, rhythm, and movement through charcoal and pastels. These works leave behind heavy collage for direct mark-making, where bold lines and saturated color take the lead. Shapes twist, stretch, and vibrate across the surface, evoking jazz, spirit, and improvisation. Figures emerge and dissolve, sometimes recognizable, sometimes abstracted, as if caught in a dance between form and freedom.
This collection asks the viewer to feel as much as to see — to follow the beat of a line, the hum of a color, the pulse of a gesture. Each drawing becomes less about portrait and more about motion, balancing the raw physicality of the medium with the emotional truth carried by the subject. (Keywords: African American art, contemporary art, mixed media, charcoal, pastels).READ MORE ON MY BLOG
Mixed Media
Mixed Media : Stirring Up The Colors
Sometimes charcoal gives me the weight I need. Sometimes pastel brings in the color. Torn paper can create an edge that a drawn line cannot. Found materials, paint, and digital processes can each add something that changes the way the image is felt.
The material usually follows the idea.
I do not begin by deciding that a work has to be mixed media. I begin with the image and let it tell me what it needs. If charcoal is enough, I stop there. If it needs color, texture, another surface, or another kind of line, I add it.
What interests me is what happens when those different materials begin to work together instead of competing with one another.
A torn edge can become a line. A layer of pastel can push a figure forward. Charcoal can pull separate pieces back into the same space. Sometimes the material itself introduces an accident or a direction I had not planned.
That is part of the process.
Mixed media gives me the freedom to keep building until the image begins to say what I need it to say.
