Mark Anthony West Jr

Animation / Video / Film, Drawing, Multimedia, Painting, Photography, Public Art, Sculpture / Installation, Visual / Media

My art is an immersive experience. I create full scenes designed to help the viewer escape reality or to inspire them out of depression. I base my content on my research as a historian, my travels around the world and life in Baltimore, and biblical stories. In my earlier work, I focused primarily on the face but recently, I have been focusing on creating the entire setting and using trees and lights to add life to my scenes. In my works featuring Baltimore, I typically include the blue light and feature the pointed top homes that line North Ave and Reservoir Hill. These two things come to mind when I think of my city. I usually add butterflies which represent the hope that remains.

Stylistically, I generally paint jet black people in humanistic dramatic settings. Some may think of blackface when they see my art, but blackface was actually inspired by African art extending 3000 years ago, found in ancient Egyptian and Kushite pyramid art. My work is a reclamation of ancient African art. Most of the history is erased so I repaint those characters in powerful and meaningful depictions to pay homage to ancestral african and in process, create new stories. I take black subjects and transmute them through a process I call Afro-reverence. The ultimate goal is to elevate what black means. Black is also my favorite color because no matter what color you mix with black, the color will still be black making it more powerful than the other colors. Black is the color of carbon, which is the foundation of life, and black is a color of luxury, that is why I like painting jet, black people.