Ashley Booker

As an artist, I strive to make my work as raw as possible. Each painting is intuitive; rather than planning out a composition, I tend to let my feelings in the moment dictate how my art looks. As a Biracial Black woman, I feel that my identity plays a large role in the making of my work. Looking back into the shaping of Contemporary Western art, African art has often been at the forefront. More specifically, artists such as Picasso and Matisse appropriated aspects of various African sculptures and ceremonial masks in the early 20th century, and thus, grew into the contemporary Western art world. That being said, I like to think of my work as a reclamation of my own culture and heritage as an African American individual, but also a testament to a world that derives its success at the expense and the exploitation of another’s.