This body of work was birthed out of a project I began in Boston towards the end of grad school entitled Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? This involves me engaging with black churches to learn about the church's role in Black life and understand the unique ways they express their faith. Since returning home last year, I have shifted my focus to working closely with my local church in Markham, Legacy Christian Community Worship Centre, where my parents are the lead Pastors.

The next wall shows moments of solace in the church. It shows the church as a shared space where individuals can coexist regardless of their interior realities.

In these paintings, I wanted to push boundaries of representation and use colour as a tool that can emote a state of being. At times color is used metaphorically to bring seemingly unrelated or abstract ideas together in the pictorial space. Working in this way creates complexity and ambiguity and offers multiple interpretations of meaning. I use color and light to provoke emotional tonality in the subject matter. The choice of color can suggest the temperature or a specific mood, as well as provide a structure within the composition. In my painted spaces, color plays an integral role in leading the viewer through the implied narrative and performs as the subject's interior space.

In my process, I typically work with a photo as a reference, and through the act of painting the image shifts through my colour choices. As a result, the colour tends to either forefront the figure in ways that the photograph was not, or it brings the viewer into a heightened sense of the figure's reality.

I’m drawn to using color to create a sense of balance, harmony, or tension that can point towards a broader context beyond the frame. In my paintings, I want the figures to appear alive as if inhabiting space. In the middle painting called, Hell in Paradise, there's a duality between the interior with silhouetted tropical landscape and the exterior which holds this undeniable red. There is a sense of both calmness and unease as the figure sits and waits patiently for things to unfold.

This final wall shows bold declarations of the ways in which the women of the church present themselves. The practice of women in leadership roles in the church at large is still questioned to this day and this wall shows the ways in which the women of Legacy feel empowered to express their faith. Whether it is through instruments, attire, or spoken word.

In my practice, Realism functions in this realm of belief because when you paint something that is convincingly true, it holds a certain weight to it that can convey an idea or an assortment of ideas. I am drawn to realist painting because it allows me to slow down and consider the complexities of the human condition more intimately. The pictorial spaces I create foster a better understanding of my own experiences and, more broadly, the experiences of those around me. I paint the Black body in interior spaces in the style of realism as a way to invite you into this alternate world or social conditioning that is very real in part because they’re derived from experiences, whether lived or imaginary, or made real through the act of painting. I work in this way to centralize the Black body in ideas and narratives that I believe are necessary.