How has your family inspired your artwork?
My grandfather was a pastor at Greater Mount Sinai Baptist Church in New Orleans as well as working a full-time job. I have all his Bibles, his robes, all these vintage photos. I look at this stuff simultaneously while I’m painting. He always said, “We’re all golden people,” and that ultimately led to me saying that every person I paint is gonna be painted in gold.
I also always paint a cross, a stained [glass] cross, for all of my shows. My grandfather didn’t have stained windows in the church. So one summer we actually removed the windows, took them down, and we painted our own stained windows.
My art is my homage to my grandfather, paying tribute to someone that gave me a lot of words of advice and [inspired me as] a man taking care of the family. So, paying it forward has always been the model of my art. That’s also why I decided to name the art collective Freeman Revival. Freeman is our maiden last name, but then growing up, no matter what, I was forced to go to church revivals. No matter where I was at, it was like, “Hey, you better get here.”
