Chrysalis examines the unstable space between what we have been and what we are becoming. Through Black figurative painting, memory, history, fatherhood, symbolism, and personal mythology, I consider transformation not as a clean act of rebirth, but as a period of pressure, rupture, reconstruction, and possibility.

A chrysalis is neither an ending nor an arrival. It is a temporary space where an existing form is broken down, reorganized, and made unfamiliar before something new can emerge. That idea speaks to the figures in these works, but also to the evolution of my practice. Over the last several years, my work has expanded through portraiture, surrealism, public art, historical narrative, pattern, and color. In Chrysalis, those familiar elements remain, but I am allowing them to shift. Figures become less fixed and more psychological. Atmosphere, gesture, abstraction, and light begin to carry as much meaning as the subject itself. Some works reach backward toward memory and history, while others move toward forms and ideas I am still discovering. I am interested in the place where identity is still being negotiated. Growth can require repetition, revision, shedding, and sometimes the willingness to move beyond visual habits or narratives that once felt necessary. The work does not attempt to present transformation as complete. Instead, it holds the tension of being in process.

Chrysalis is also about trajectory - not just where the work has been, but what is beginning to emerge from it. I see this exhibition as a marker in an ongoing practice: one that continues to explore Black life, fatherhood, memory, and personal mythology while opening itself to more vulnerability, experimentation, and ambiguity. Chrysalis exists in that middle space - between preservation and reinvention, familiarity and experimentation, inheritance and self-definition. It is less about arriving as something new than recognizing that becoming is already taking place.

Sir’Ra