FROM MOVEMENT TO MEMORY: Gathering the whispers

                                                               I. Learning to Speak Through Movement
Before I ever worked with paint and material, I learned to speak through movement. Dance became my first discipline and my
first teacher, shaping how I understand form, endurance, and presence. My early education in New York City placed me inside a lineage of rigorous training and creative possibility that would define the foundation of my artistic life.

After auditioning for both the High School of Performing Arts—famously known for the film Fame—and the High School of Music
and Art, and being accepted to both, I chose to attend the High School of Performing Arts. There, I immersed myself in dance, refining my technique, exploring multiple styles, and developing a deep respect for discipline and craft.

Upon graduating, I received offers from several prestigious institutions, including The Martha Graham Dance Company, a full scholarship to study dance at the Juilliard School, and an apprenticeship with the New York City Ballet Company, where I would ultimately partner with Arthur Mitchell, the only African American dancer in the company. I continued my studies at the School
of American Ballet, deepening my technical training and commitment to performance.

                                                               II. Alvin Ailey and Art as Witness
That foundation found its fullest expression when I was invited to join the Alvin Ailey American Dance Company as a founding member. Working with Alvin Ailey placed me inside a collective voice—one rooted in Black history, struggle, endurance, and
spiritual presence. Dance became more than performance; it became a way of carrying history through the body, of making
memory visible through movement.

Alvin taught me my history. He taught my body history. He taught the sound of music in spirit—my history. Dancing in his
company, I learned not only technique, but how to love my history. Songs such as I’ve Been Buked and I’ve Been Scorned 
carried what the body remembers long after words fall away. Through this work, I came to understand art as witness—an act of remembrance shaped by movement, discipline, and collective voice.
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Following my years with Alvin Ailey, I continued to dance on Broadway, in film and television, and on international stages,
including Donald McKayle’s Black New World. These experiences expanded my understanding of performance as cultural
expression and deepened my awareness of history carried through the body.
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                                                              III. Edisto Island: Return and Reckoning
After years of movement shaped by collective history, a journey to Edisto Island, South Carolina, shifted my work inward--
toward lineage, memory, and what had long gone unspoken. Edisto, a small sea island off the coast of Charleston, was where
my parents were born, and it was part of a Gullah community whose history was rarely discussed in my family.
What began as a search for connection became a reckoning with silence and inheritance. During this journey, I spoke with
family members, archivists, activists, legal officials, and churchgoers. I engaged in archival research, examining family
photographs, legal documents related to slavery and land ownership, and deeply personal diaries. The experience was overwhelming, yet profoundly grounding. Through Edisto, memory began to speak—not loudly, but insistently.

                                                             IV. Painting as Witness
Through painting, I found a way to hold what movement alone could no longer contain. The work became a practice
of listening—of gathering what arrived quietly, in fragments, in whispers. What had once been carried through the body
now required material form. My paintings document, explore, and commune with history through an assemblage of intuitive
​and intentional techniques. Primarily figurative with elements of abstraction, the work often incorporates painted portraits,
photographs, historical documents, cheesecloth, shells, oils, acrylics, varnish, and pastels. Each material carries its own
memory, contributing to a visual language shaped by endurance, vulnerability, and survival.

Painting on tarpaper has become a signature element of my practice. Once a commonplace and overlooked material, it holds
deep symbolic resonance, evoking histories of labor, resilience, and transformation. Its surface resists perfection, requiring negotiation rather than control—mirroring the fragmentary nature of the histories I seek to honor.

Although largely self‑taught, my work is informed by a wide range of influences, including Romare Bearden, Van Gogh,
Matisse, Jackson Pollock, and Basquiat. I also studied portrait painting at the Art Students League of New York under
John Howard Sanden and continued my exploration at the Art Students League of Houston. Across these experiences,
I have remained committed to experimentation, allowing intuition and material to guide the work as much as intention.
My work has been exhibited in galleries throughout the United States, Europe, and India, and I have been commissioned to
create murals for various institutions and private clients. Among my most meaningful projects was a series on the history of
the “Untouchables” (Dalits and Harijans), created for a museum in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India.

                                                            V. Continuation
Now in my later years, my work continues to unfold in motion—across series, materials, and reflection. I paint, write, and
combine poetry with image as a way of staying in conversation with memory, history, and spirit. The practice remains open, responsive, and unfinished. What matters most is not resolution, but attention: to what persists, to what whispers, and to
​what asks to be carried forward.