About Me

Afrocentric culture, inspiring women, and history’s impact on the present inform my cartooning and filmmaking process.  Research-centered, my fictional narratives draw on present-day issues. Through the use of fantasy, I create playful combinations of tragedy and comedy to disempower inner fears and tackle intense subject matter. My work challenges the viewer’s stereotypes, inciting us all to confront our own prejudice.

 

After being inspired to write a story about faith and the conflicting emotions about the impact of missionaries from the perspective of an African girl, my new task was to discover a visual language that would take readers on the journey I embarked on in discovering African culture. My current series, Jaydi's Story, aesthetically came to life through intensive environmental studies of East Africa in traditional materials; including watercolor, pastels, acrylic paintings, oil paintings and mixed media, conducted in the collections leading up to my current work. The collections informed the visual language of digital drawings and paintings that would become Jaydi’s Story.

 

Jaydi’s Story  is a graphic novel series that expresses my interest in the history of colonization and its impact on African nations.  Colonization has a direct link to poverty, corruption, and conflict. Jaydi’s Story addresses the alarming lack of education regarding the level of exploitation that Africa has experienced, seeking to spread awareness to the people whose ancestors derived from it, the Diaspora.

 

Educating current and future generations will enable a new and better existence. I feel compelled to seek out, align with, and contribute to the means of restorative justice, no matter the scale of impact my actions may have.  In,  Jaydi's Story, I speak from my own perspective as an African American/African Caribbean woman attempting to get in touch with formerly lost pieces of my identity. This love letter to Africa expresses my frustration with the reality of injustice and the misuse of religious beliefs; it also acknowledges the sense of hopefulness I feel for the future of Africans worldwide.