BBFA first festival!
In my youth I loved using oil pastels in Dianne Glick’s art class at Grace St. Luke’s School and linoleum woodblocks in Peter Bowman’s class at Memphis University School. My interests grew at Fulbright College- where my parents encouraged me to take electives in Fine Art, alongside my history major. In my study of history and language, I found myself dancing through graduate schools, including the College of Charleston, the Citadel, Memphis University Graduate School, Arkansas State, and a summer at Middlebury College in Vermont. With encouragement to make art during the 2020 quarantine from an interior designer named Lindley Martens, I looked into the darkness of the absence of civil liberties only to have a quiet realization that art is a worthwhile pursuit. I received guidance and support from mentors like Memphis artist and longtime friend, Jympsie Ayers, renowned scientist and artist George Huang, and businessman and patron investor, my uncle, Larry Bryant.
Today I still use linoleum block prints, as well as oil paints and canvases, reference photos, and artificial intelligence for learning painting techniques, cutting techniques, and photo-to-painting conversion techniques using my photos as derivative images. My work is a dialogue about futility and the troubling validity that lies between the profound and the mundane. The underlying question of my work is why in the face of death do we continue to create?
While my work is derived from a negative outlook, the act of creating is my positive resolve. I created the Bryant Bottega of Fine Arts not only to market and sell art but also to shock the cultural status quo. I think that art can mitigate the cancers of desperate crimes, gang activity, gun violence, and other dangers that plague the city of Memphis. My paintings and my prints are small acts of defiance in the face of a violent, destructive, corrupt and ill-functioning interior. They are meant to hold on to moments of peace and meaning. I hope that by attesting to the knowledge that has been passed down to me, and honoring and reimagining the traditions that we remember, I can help others overcome the iniquity that casts a shadow over this city and let a cheerful and promising determination guide me.