I was born in Brooklyn, New York on June 23rd, 1995 at Saint Mary’s Hospital, in the area historically known as Weeksville. Crown Heights raised me during a time when the neighborhood was replete with immigrants from the Caribbean. Bakers, dressmakers, home health aids–like my mother–filled the apartment buildings that ran along Utica Avenue’s abundant cross-streets, all in hopes to attain better lives and opportunities for their youths.

Coming from an extended family–three aunts, and innumerable cousins were invaluable to an only child like myself–and growing up in a community woven together through a collective pursuit for success raised me to see civic engagement as a mandate integral to the strength of the neighborhood. Everyone, everywhere, deserves nice things, and to strive for that start at home, both private and communal.

Growing up, Friday nights were a time of revelry and relaxation. It was tradition for the whole family to come over to my Aunt Delores’ house for dinner, a chance to unwind after an arduous work week. My cousin Chantal and I would come home from school in the early afternoon and immediately find ourselves caught amidst a dervish of flavors as the scent of my auntie’s par-cooked dishes would emanate into the entryway.

After getting changed, Chantal and I would join Auntie Del in the kitchen, stirring cream sauces for macaroni pie, forming ground beef golfballs for burgers, grating carrots, and opening bottles of Guinness for carrot cake. As I grew older, my role in the kitchen grew in turn, from minute pinches of seasoning to simmering split pea soup, to building jerk marinades for freshly slaughtered chickens, to serving pork roulades with cream cheese and sundried tomatoes. Now that my extended family has moved beyond New York, I fondly recall those early Friday night dinners and my relatives’ faces as they dined on my cooking pridefully. Those moments made clear the value of one’s hands and the impactfulness of a meal made with loving intention.

My practice at its core is generated from my passion for cookery. Growing up without the Patois of my ancestors, I came to see the kitchen, enlivened with the percussive rattle of pot covers over a rolling boil, the cry of marinated meats as they meet hot oil, and the moist heat of which notes of ginger and allspice and burnt sugar are held aloft, as the tether to my Jamaican heritage. As a child of the five boroughs, I learned to love the velveteen richness of a fresh knish with mustard, the enrapturing scorch of a bird’s eye chili in minced pork and the titillating glacial crisp of peppermint and dark chocolate as much as I do the euphoric richness of cow foot soup and spinners.

My paintings are made in homage to the bevy of cuisines that I have had the privilege to encounter. My color is flavor, my color is texture and my color is heat. Built up carefully in layers and whorls of oil pastel, and given structure through ciphers, stripped down flags and location markers, the works are reflections on the experience of partaking in these delicacies and responses to the hybridity that comes with being a member of the Jamaican diaspora. Through my practice, I’m building a visual Patois, a body of work and record through which I can triangulate myself between the Caribbean, New York and the innumerable cultures and cuisines yet encountered.