My art practice begins and ends with storytelling. I paint narratives telling the stories of people I know that emphasize black agency contextualized against the backdrops of bus stops in Black geographical meccas. I grew up in New Orleans, a city where mass transit, the bus specifically, is essential to the livelihoods of many Black Americans. There, life lessons, casual conversations, and even local childhood fables and fairytales don't begin with the literary classic "Once upon a Time" but with "Let me tell you about this/these niggas at the bus stop." The exploration of my narrative paintings begins by focusing on three pillars of storytelling: people, places, and purpose. 

I address the depiction of the figures in my work by contextualizing the use of the word niggas within the confounds of the Black American oral tradition. Nigga(s) is an ambiguously Black American term commonly used in conjunction with African American English Vernacular. Its origins derive from hate, now defined in a plethora of meanings. One of those meanings is a term of endearment to describe oneself and other Black Americans. A term so intrinsically Black, that only other Black Americans instinctually can differentiate the genre of the oral tradition by the varied contextual tonal use of the word "Nigga” (historical), "Niigggaaaa "(magical realism), and "NIGGA” (thriller). Painting a diverse representational view of the likeness of the figures in these stories through skin tone, sexual orientation, hair texture, fashion, etc., preserves the agency emanating naturally from Black Americans.

  The bus stops in geographical Black meccas like New Orleans, Louisiana, Atlanta, Georgia, and Queens, New York, in which many of these stories take place, play a significant role in storytelling as well as the symbolic and figurative vehicle in which they are orally passed from person to person. 

Cowboy On Canal Street, is a retelling of Cinderella where Prince Charming is a 6'4, deeply melanated Black man with a short afro from Houston, Texas, whose carriage was a horse and buggy that he drove through the streets of the New Orleans French Quarter to stop his bride from marrying another man. A variation to this retelling is Charming traveling by way of the Greyhound bus, and in this rendition, Cinderella is no longer a fairytale because the current storyteller knows Charming. The familiarity of each retelling of these stories is a direct link to the bus stop's significance as more than a backdrop, thus aiding in grounding the story into reality, regardless of whether the tale is fact, fiction, or a mix of both. 

My purpose for the work I create is to participate in the passing of these stories that embedded themselves in the identity of this black millennial woman. I've steeped the billboards at the bus stops with staple Black pop culture imagery and symbolism to further instill familiarity and date my generational retelling of these stories through an introspective gaze. For a moment, I can time stamp the world around me as I heard or retold the stories of niggas at the bus stop.