The Current of American Water
Jacob Dowling Gallery, 2021
Most narratives around people like my grandfather say the Great Migration was set in motion by Black families emigrating North in search of jobs. But the direction of American water has always been toward escape: refugee flight patterns.
This suite of paintings grew from this push and pull. Excavating with a power sander became as much a painting tool as the brushes. Part of my family’s narrative exists here in repeat: my grandfather being chased from his Mississippi home by the Ku Klux Klan, and other stories weave in and out. Water reoccurs, flowing in an ocean, poured from a basin, contained or free, life-giver or graveyard.
The American Home, 96" x 48"
The American Progression, 42" x 57"
The American Attachment, 29" x 45"
The American Flag, 44" x 52"
The American Ocean, 52" x 54"
The American Portrait, 12" x 15"
The American Partiality, 16" x 20"
The American Surrogate, 26.5" x 33"
The American Objectivity, 48" x 32"
The American Everlasting, 25" x 48"
The American Fire, 9" x 12"