Q1: What were your earliest influences and how did they lead you to start in the arts?
A1: My early influences were film, music, fashion, photography, superheroes, outsiders and rebels, NYC and Hollywood. My Dad is a documentary filmmaker and Mom is an all-around creative who paints, designs interiors, does theatrical makeup, and has an amazing style. I picked up my first camera and drawing pad after seeing Star Wars as a kid. I think that franchise in particular activated the imaginations of a generation and continues to do so. While most teens were sneaking out at night to go party, I was home drawing. My first foray into the professional creative world was as a junior designer at Donna Karan Menswear Collection when I was 22.
Q2: How has modern technology been incorporated into your work?
A2: Well, I am one of the adapter generation.. I didn't grow up with computers or cell phones, so sketchbooks and analogue photography were my tools. It took a long time for me to integrate anything digital into my painting process but now I'm on board. I love mixed media .. the artograph - paint and ink on photograph that perhaps started in the digital realm but is freed from the screen and finds its life on paper or canvas.
Q3: Your work encompasses a wide range of subjects such as people, places, objects, spirituality, fashion, and music. Do you have any preferences among these subjects, and how do they inform your creative output?
A3: I think, for me, everything starts with my fascination with people and the invisible thing that holds us together, individually and collectively. So, even in a still life or an abstract.. I'm looking to make a portrait.. a portrait of a mountain, portrait of a wine glass.. Nonhuman objects nonetheless have a history of experienced happiness or sadness around them . Everything, living or inanimate, has a story or a feeling it emanates.
Q4: How has your cultural background influenced your work?
A4: Well, my father came to the US in 1960 from Haiti with his siblings and my grandparents. They came as political exiles. My grandfather was the top general there, under dictator Papa Doc Duvalier. When the Kennedy administration organized an overthrow meant to install my grandfather as President This was found out and the family were put on a hit list. After a year of hiding in the Venezuelan embassy, they made a harrowing bullet charged run to the airport and landed in NYC. My mom's family are Corsican. Birthplace of Napolean. It's funny that Haiti was the only country to defeat Napolean's army. Both French Island cultures are soaked with a spirit that is strong and will fight hard for itself - rebels against attempts at oppression. As volatile as Haiti's history is.. there are more self-taught artists there per square mile than anywhere else on earth. I think having those two lineages in my genes and being born on yet a third island (Manhattan) of enormous energetic substance fuels everything I do creatively in some strange, magnetic way.There is a formal, yet primativist feel to the way i work and I think that resonates.
Q5. Do you notice differences in your work and creative process when in New York or Los Angeles, and if so, how do they manifest and why?
A5: Work comes where work is made. I do access different things, places, and vibes in NY that I don't in LA and vice versa. There is no either or and nothing is really black or white. It took a while to accept that I can paint and take pictures, even on the same piece, and it can be harmonious. NY and LA can encapsulate a big, traveling studio that is industrial and gritty as well as natural and vast. Even here, politically, the right-wing and left-wing are two sides of the same bird. I think my philosophy in everything is to encourage the integration of perceived opposites in harmony.
Q6. How has Basquiat influenced your work, and what sets your art apart from his?
A6: I was already painting as a child before I really even became aware of Jean-Michel's work. Self-taught, so definitely a primitivism, and similarities in line and in theme: Music, film, rebellion, spirituality. Painting on found objects, including text and painting big were all direct influences, for sure. What sets us apart is that I paint a bit more figuratively.. though with abstraction still, for sure. Shadow and dimension are big parts of my work, as are secondary colors. Jean-Michel was more immediate and urgent — lots of primary color and a fast application.
