I’ve been silkscreening since I was in 8th grade. For years I’ve been blessed with the perspective to think of images in layers of color. We can all do it honestly. I’ve just been doing it for a while. My very first image that I printed was from an X-Men comic (I and my brothers have read comics from the time we were kids) on an old t shirt. Pretty sure it had Wolverine or Nightcrawler in it.
As I evolved as an artist who uses printmaking as a medium and I began to realize the impactfulness of it, I began to think more of images that have power and what I wanted to reproduce and I what I wanted to communicate. The amazingness of printmaking is its versatility and that you can photographically recreate detailed imagery. I’d found this picture of a slave who to me did not communicate the energy and being of ‘slave’. To me she looked proud, self-possessed, self-aware. Dynamic. She did not appear to be owned by anyone despite what any label on the photograph said. That being said, it did also remind me of the oft used historical fine art painting subject matter of odalisque. It was very rare if ever a woman of darker skin tone was depicted in any of those classical paintings at all and if so as erotic or desired. I wanted to highlight all that I felt this woman exuded, even if labeled a ‘slave’.
