McKinley Wallace III

About the Artist

McKinley Wallace III is a painter and draftsman whose art depicts strength expounded by the oppressed and an educator dedicated to cultivating people-oriented environments that foster inclusive community building and high-quality learning. Wallace received a Bachelor of Fine Art in painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). His studio work has obtained both local and national attention, including solo exhibitions at MICA, Jubilee Arts, Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and, later this year, Gallery CA and Creative Alliance, as well as group shows at Connersmith Gallery, Waller Gallery, Palazzo dei Cartelloni in Florence, and Interlochen Center of the Arts. He has also worked collaboratively to create murals for NIKE, Inc., Access Art, Inc., and Monarch Global Academy. McKinley Wallace III is honored to receive The Maryland State Arts Council’s Individual Artist Award. With this award, he intends to plan and implement a collaborative research project to uncover previously unseen and unheard, site-specific stories of racial violence and survival in Baltimore's pre-civil war case laws. Each case focuses on the unjust criminality of Black bodies. Wallace aims to create explicit, mixed-media illustrations of these cases to visually identify how they are impacting central functions of Maryland today.

Artist's Statement

I aim to create what embodies a unique strength expounded by the oppressed. A power manifested in resilient peoples, determined to resist erasure and contradict dominant narratives. My intent is not to perpetuate powerlessness, but a need to frame explicit depictions of the humanity deprived of bodies and faces, demanding liberation from the elite in Baltimore City and beyond.