When I went for my residency in Amsterdam, I was an oil painter. At that time, I took many pictures as a way to document. I came back here and I saw many family albums. I was also taking a lot of photographs of images from newspapers, anything from the. If I saw interesting expressions, I’d snap that. At some point, I had a whole archive of different expressions.
Initially I had about 48 collages of faces. It was politicians, sportsmen and -women, family members, actors. What they had in common was that they were portraits of black people. I arranged them into a grid and titled that installation. I then moved to painting with ink and charcoal and collaging simultaneously, seeing how these materials cohered.
It was a reaction to many things, and I could say that there was a childishness to the work because I was exploring. For drawing, I’ve been using ink, charcoal and liquid charcoal. The drying process is very fast, so I need to be confident in my execution. The process forces me to be brave. As I amass more work, there have been so many technical things to consider, like the ink I am using and the paper the images are printed on. There are many I called “failed paintings”, about three of every four. But these are paintings that I revisit with more experience and knowledge.