a life in motion

     
My artistic life began in movement, after training in dance at New York's High School of Performing Arts. I studied at the School of American Ballet and became a founding member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Company. Performing during a time of profound cultural and political awakening. I experienced art as a vessel for history, identity, and collective memory.

Following a long dance career - on Broadway, in film and television, and on international stages - I turned more fully to painting. Although I had worked visually for many years, a transformative journey to Edisto Island, South Carolina, where my Gullah parents were born, awakened a deeper connection to my heritage. There, through conversation, archival research, and the place itself, I encountered stories long unspoken yet deeply present.

Through painting, I found a way to gather these fragments - memory, history, spirit - into form. My work is primarily figurative, layered with abstraction, and often incorporates photographs, historical documents, textiles, shells, and paint on tarpaper. These materials speak to endurance, transformation, and survival.

Now in my eighties, I continue to work across multiple series, combining painting with poetry and reflections. My art remains an evolving practice - one shaped by perseverance, patience, and motion - offered as an invitation to witness, remember, and feel.