I consider Romare Bearden to be an early influence on my development as an artist. Members of my generation of black artists were the beneficiaries of the artistic legacy of his pioneering achievements. While my collage work emphasizes different aspects of the medium than Bearden’s, I hope there is resonance between my work and his.

Bearden’s approach to collage is as montage, employing abrupt transitions of scale and spatial position. My work in collage differs in key ways. I do not incorporate imagery from other media sources. My approach is more patchwork quilt than montage. And while Bearden depicted the social sphere, my work operates in the private arena. My work Epilogue (2012) is part of a larger series of double self-portraits in which my subject fights with and triumphs over herself. I use old textile printing blocks to mark paper, which I then rip and collage to create surfaces or landscapes on which to draw. Like Bearden, I pursue saturated color, pattern and figurative expression, and follow a process of selecting and piecing, attempting to craft a coherent whole of fragments and parts.