During the Summer of 2009 I was having dessert at my new boyfriend's house for his father's birthday when suddenly his dad, who I barely knew stated, "did you know black people don't have brains?" Although he later insisted he was making a joke, it was quite clear to me it was not a joke and had I been a black girl, it would have never came out. He surely didn't know me at all. It wasn't long after that I decided what I would be using as my subject matter for senior year at SVA.

Racism has been a constant theme interfering with my life and the way I'd like to live with people around me. I grew up in a predominately black neighborhood. Being the only white female of my age on my block, I learned everything amongst black people and to this day I know how privileged I am to have been raised around such different culture and diversity. The most frustrating problem for me is the assumption associated with racism. White people automatically assume I'm racist based solely on my skin color and the way I look on the surface. In countless instances I've been caught in uncomfortable situations with people which basically end with me hollering and defending the black race at the sound of the "N" word or any prejudice remark.With the inspiration of my boyfriend and his father's upsetting remark, I started considering ways in which I could make positive out of the negative by combining my passions of equality and art, visually. I evoked a strong interest in Black Panther research and began painting from found photographs, keeping my palettes strictly black and white (pun intended). I also created three sets of two woodcut prints showing one black and one white person's separate views regarding the same topic. For the spring semester, I focused on highlighting precisely my individual, most personal cultivations. I found ironic wordsassociated with products we use everyday.

For instance, I worked with band-aids which imply "band-aiding" or covering something up (so I 'covered up' the N word). I also used a container of white-out and replaced some words on the label with words like "assumption" and "skin". My final painting is depicting two crayons. One is brown and the other is 'flesh' and the flesh is what looks to be white flesh. All of my paintings for the spring semester are on plywood or finished wood panels from trees indigenous to the Southern East Coast letting the history of racism play a role in the work. I then completed two woodcut prints describing tanning and bleaching skin with one black and one white female's legs crossed over-layed with words used in marketing for each altering process. One paper is the color of black skin and the other of white skin, but I used the same color ink printed on both to stand as the ultimate perfect amount of skin pigment.

My primary intention is to provoke new and positive thoughts in people who may have never considered. I am aware of the controversy and confusion my work will evoke in people and I am sensitive and hesitant as to how invisible I want to be publicly; as far as my ethnicity. I definitely fancy people assuming I'm black based on my work alone and I'm going to exaggerate that more in the future. I intend on enhancing further on this body of work, keeping in mind the common thread of assumption placed on me on behalf of my skin color. The fears white people have of particular neighborhoods and marrying black people are what I'm thinking of for my next paintings. By making all of the above issues public, I am peeling off the band-aid and scratching the white off in hopes of directing people to the core surface of human beings beyond pigment and assumption. I sincerely thank you for stopping by to read this and view my work. I'd love to hear any thoughts.....