My work explores the ways memory, consumer culture, place, and identity continue to shape us long after the systems that formed them begin to disappear. Through large-scale acrylic paintings that incorporate photographic collage, I construct imagined dystopian landscapes rooted in the geography and cultural history of my hometown, Louisville, Kentucky. These paintings are not predictions of the future, but psychological reconstructions of the present—worlds where the remnants of everyday life become evidence of what we once valued and who we became because of it.

Scattered throughout these environments are familiar fragments of American culture: childhood toys, luxury objects, abandoned landmarks, commercial signage, and symbols of popular culture. Rather than functioning as nostalgic decoration, these objects operate as cultural artifacts—reminders that consumerism, memory, and lived experience leave lasting psychological imprints that survive even after the physical world around them has begun to collapse.

The figures who inhabit these spaces are intentionally composed, resilient, and self-possessed. Often dressed in brightly colored bunny suits or contemporary streetwear, they stand in deliberate contrast to the devastation surrounding them. This visual contradiction reflects one of the central concerns of my practice: while societies, economies, and physical environments may deteriorate, human identity—and particularly the resilience of Black identity—continues to endure. The paintings suggest that survival is not only physical, but psychological and cultural.

Photographic collage has become an integral part of my process. Influenced by Robert Rauschenberg’s integration of found imagery, I incorporate photographs of recognizable Louisville locations, particularly neighborhoods such as Bardstown Road, as archival layers within the paintings. These photographic fragments function as evidence of the real city while the painted environments imagine its psychological afterlife. Together, they create a dialogue between documentation and invention, memory and myth, preserving places that continue to shape identity even as they change or disappear.

Many of my paintings intentionally resist fixed narratives. Objects that might imply danger, nostalgia, comfort, or loss are placed together without offering a definitive explanation, inviting viewers to complete the story themselves. In doing so, the work explores not only how environments shape identity, but also how personal history, cultural background, and social assumptions influence the meanings we assign to images.

Ultimately, my paintings investigate what remains after the structures that define modern life begin to fail. They are meditations on memory, cultural inheritance, resilience, and the enduring relationship between people and the places that formed them. By combining realism, surrealism, archival imagery, and symbolic storytelling, I seek to create paintings that exist between history and imagination, transforming familiar landscapes into psychological spaces where the past continues to live within the present.

Click here for a printable copy