Can beauty open our hearts to difficult conversations?

I believe there is beauty

in hearing the voices of people
who haven't been heard.

[Drawing the Blinds, 2014]

[The Jerome Project
(Asphalt and Chalk III 2014)]

[Beneath an Unforgiving Sun
(from a Tropical Space), 2020]

That's a complex idea

because the things that must be said

are not always lovely,

but somehow,

if they're reflective of truth,

I think fundamentally
that makes them beautiful.

(Music)

There's the aesthetic beauty of the work

that in some cases functions
as more of a Trojan horse.

It allows one to open their hearts
to difficult conversations.

Maybe you feel attracted to the beauty,

and while compelled by the technique,

the color,

the form or composition,

maybe the difficult
conversation sneaks up.

[Billy Lee & Ona Judge
Portraits in Tar, 2016]

I really taught myself how to paint

by spending time at museums

and looking at the people that --

the artists, rather, that I was
told were the masters.

Looking at the Rembrandts,

Renoir,

Manet,

it becomes quite obvious

that if I'm going to learn
how to paint a self-portrait

by studing those people,

I'm going to be challenged

when it comes to mixing my skin

or mixing the skin
of those people in my family.

There's literally formulas
written down historically

to tell me how to paint white skin --

what colors I should use
for the underpainting,

what colors I should use
for the impasto highlights.

That doesn't really exist for dark skin.

It's not a thing.

It's not a thing because

the reality is our skin wasn't
considered beautiful.

The picture,

the world that is represented
in the history of paintings

doesn't reflect me.

It doesn't reflect the things
that I value in that way,

and that's the conflict that I struggle
with so frequently --

is I love the technique
of these paintings,

I have learned from the technique
of these paintings,

and yet I know that they have
no concern for me.

And so there are so many of us

who are amending this history

in order to simply say we were there.

Because you couldn't see
doesn't mean we weren't there.

We have been there.

We have been here.

We've continued to be seen
as not beautiful,

but we are,

and we are here.

So many of the things that I make

end up as maybe futile attempts
to reinforce that idea.

[Drawing the Blinds, 2014]

[Seeing Through Time, 2018]

Even though I've had the Western training,

my eye is still drawn
to the folks who look like me.

And so sometimes in my work,

I have used strategies like whiting out
the rest of the composition

in order to focus on the character
who may go unseen otherwise.

I have cut out other figures
from the painting,

one, to either emphasize their absence,

or two, to get you to focus
on the other folks in the composition.

[Intravenous (From
a Tropical Space), 2020]

So The Jerome Project aesthetically
draws on hundreds of years

of religious icon painting.

A kind of aesthetic structure

that was reserved for the church,

reserved for saints.

It's a project that is an exploration
of the criminal justice system.

Not asking the question
are these people innocent or guilty,

but more, is this the way
that we should deal with our citizens.

I started a body of work

because after being
separated from my father

for almost 15 years,

I reconnected with my father

and I really didn't know
how to make a place for him

in my life.

As with most things I don't understand,

I work them out in the studio.

And so I just started making
these portraits of mugshots,

starting because I did
a Google search for my father

just wondering what had happened
over this 15 year period.

Where had he gone?

And I found his mugshot,

which of course was of no surprise,

but I found in that first search,

97 other Black men with exactly
the same first and last name

and I found their mugshots,

and that was a surprise.

And not knowing what to do,

I just started painting them.

Initially, the tar was
a formula to allow me

to figure out how much of these men's
life had been lost to incarceration,

but I gave up that,

and the tar became far more
symbolic as I continued,

because what I realized

is the amount of time that you spend
incarcerated is just the beginning

of how long it's going to impact
that rest of your life.

So in terms of beauty within that context,

I know from my friend's family,

who have been incarcerated,

who are currently incarcerated,

folks want to be remembered.

Folks want to be seen.

We put people away for a long time,

in some cases,

for that one worst thing
that they've done.

So to a degree,

it's a way of just saying ...

I see you.

We see you.

And I think that,

as a gesture,

is beautiful.

In the painting "Behind
the Myth of Benevolence,"

there's almost this curtain of Thomas
Jefferson painted and pulled back

to reveal a Black woman who's hidden.

This Black woman is at once
Sally Mae Hemings,

but she's also every other Black woman
who was on that plantation, Monticello,

and all the rest of them.

The one thing we do know
about Thomas Jefferson

is that he believed in liberty.

Maybe more strongly than anyone
who's ever written about it,

and if we know that to be true,

if we believe that to be true,

then the only benevolent thing
to do in that context

would be to extend that liberty.

And so in this body of work,

I use two separate paintings

that are forced together
on top of one another

to emphasize this tumultuous
relationship between Black and white

in these compositions.

And so that --

that contradiction,

that devastating reality
that's always behind the curtain,

what is happening
in race relations in this country,

that's what this painting is about.

The painting is called "Another Fight
for Remembrance."

The title speaks to repitition.

The title speaks to the kind of violence
against Black people

by the police

has happened and continues to happen

and we are now seeing it happen again.

The painting is sort of editorialized
as a painting about Ferguson.

It's not not about Ferguson,

but it's also not not about Detroit,

it's also not not about Minneapolis.

The painting was started because

on a trip to New York

to see some of my own art

with my brother,

as we spent hours walking
in and out of galleries,

we ended the day by being stopped
by an undercover police car

in the middle of the street.

These two police officers
with their hands on their guns

told us to stop.

They put us up against the wall,

they accused me of stealing art

out of a gallery space where
I was actually exhibiting art.

And as they stood there
with their hands on their weapons,

I asked the police officer
what was different about my citizenship

than that of all of the other people
who were not being disturbed

in that moment.

He informed me that they
had been following us for two hours,

and that they had been getting complaints
about Black men --

two Black men walking
in and out of galleries.

That painting is about the reality

that it's not a question

of if this is going to happen again,

it's a question of when.

This most recent body of work
is called "From a Tropical Space."

This series of paintings
is about Black mothers.

The series of paintings takes place
in a super-saturated,

maybe surrealist world

not that far from the one we live in.

But in this world,

the children of these Black women

are disappearing.

What this work is really about is trauma.

The things that Black women
and women of color in particular

in our community

have to struggle through

in order to set their kids out
on the path of life.

What's encouraging for me

is that this practice of mine
has given me the opportunity

to work with young people in my community.

I'm quite certain
the answers are not in me,

but if I'm hopeful at all

it's that they may be in them.

NXTHVN is a project that started
about five years ago.

And NXTHVN is a 40,000-square-foot
arts incubator in the heart

of the Dixwell neighborhood
in New Haven, Connecticut.

This is a predominantly
Black and Brown neighborhood.

It is a neighborhood that has
the history of jazz at every corner.

Our neighborhood in many ways
has been disinvested in.

Schools are struggling to really
prepare our population

for the futures ahead of them.

I know that creativity
is an essential asset.

It takes creativity

to be able to imagine a future

that is so different than the one
that is before you.

And so every artist in our program
has a high school studio assistant.

That's a high school student
coming from the city of New Haven

who works with them
and learns their craft,

learns their practice.

And so we've seen the ways in which
pointing folks at the power of creativity

can change them.

Beauty is complicated
because of how we define it.

I think that beauty and truth

are intertwined somehow.

There's something beautiful
in truth-telling.

That is --

that as an act, truth-telling,

and the myriad ways it manifests.

There's beauty in that.