Kerry James Marshall especially was a huge influence on me in graduate school, as were Wangechi Mutu and Julie Mehretu. These artists are titans. My education was also very much in comic books, so I've been going to comic book events in New York and have met a few artists there.

Being a black artist, the first thing people want to talk about is your blackness, the importance of your blackness and your black presence.

For a while, I was nervous about portraying women because of the objectification that automatically comes with it, whether the artist intends or not.

It is hard to produce work in New York. You kind of have to center yourself - do some Zen meditation exercises and just focus. It is very distracting, and money, of course, is an issue.

I moved around a lot when I was a child; two of the houses I grew up in have totally disappeared. One was burnt in a riot, and the other was pulled down.

I needed to create something I could take with me wherever I went.

Where some may see flat, static narratives, I see a spectrum of tonal gradations and realities. What I am creating is literally black portraiture with ballpoint pen ink. I'm looking for that in-between state in an individual where the overarching definition is lost. Skin as geography is the terrain I expand by emphasizing the specificity of blackness, where an individual’s subjectivity, various realities and experiences can be drawn onto the diverse topography of the epidermis. From there, the possibilities of portraying a fully-fledged person are endless.