"A sense of community has always been important to me. I understood very early that I could not grow as an artist or as a person without being connected to institutions and clients that served the community.  During the ‘60s, I was involved with the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts as well as the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists where I designed their catalogues and posters.  I remember working on an exhibition called Five Black Artists. It featured Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Charles White, Hale Woodruff, and Horace Pippen, artists well-known in the black community but not in the wider world. You can imagine the importance for a young artist to be experiencing these giants, to actually hold a Jacob Lawrence painting in my hands. Although I really didn’t understand how important they would become, I did understand the quality of their work. These artists and their works became my muse.

"When I speak of community, I am not only talking about the immediate world around me, but also legacy.  I am always searching for projects that connect with my Afro-American roots, such as commissioned paintings for National Geographic Magazine and The National Parks Service. I have also designed thirteen stamps for the U.S. Postal Service and have images in permanent installations at three museums.

"Lastly, I have completed seven illustrated figures that have been reproduced as graphics for installation at the African Burial Ground Interpretive Center in New York, NY. As an artist who has spent a great deal of his career illustrating Africa-American history and cultures, much of it to do with slavery in the south, this project was an eye-opener in interpreting how slavery existed and prospered in the north. I was given a brief history of slaves who lived, worked, produced, and for one Peter Williams, purchased his freedom in lower Manhattan in the later 1700's. Using their biographies, one as short as two lines in a runaway slave ad, I envisioned the physical appearance of these individuals."

WORKS INCLUDE:

U.S. POSTAL SERVICE COMMISSIONED STAMPS: