Phoenix S Brown
Challenging portraiture and preconceived notions of the Black fxmale body is at the core of my painting practice. With contemporary material and aesthetic choices, I subvert the one-way window of fantasy that western painting has long offered.
Throughout art history, nature and Blackness have existed as reserves to exploit; in my work, they commingle and force us to confront our viewing access to them. My work grapples with the disconnect between reality and euro-centric narratives of Blackness, wxmanhood, and the natural world.
There is a feedback loop between my analog painting and digital editing visible in the final image. My interdisciplinary paintings are layered with impossible brush strokes from their time in digital drawing software and maintain a textured surface that speaks to the western art canon. I use technology, printmaking, and collaged surfaces to build contemporary reimaginations of utopias and resistances where Black wxmanhood is free from stereotypes and the white male gaze.