The works in this collection exhibit all the artist's held living an African-diaspora, Native, Black, and Post-Colonial Antebellum American experience thus far. Fulfilled creations display layers of material while gesture present more than aesthetic achievement, being live venues of expressive dialog holding history, culture, and life. Freely crafted with high focus on the present, these paintings are "freestyled" publicly and privately. Natural and unnatural sounds, lights, colors, rhythms, and environmental cues aide the artist's focus while adding to the work's development. Considerable layering of gestures in gold, silver, oil, acrylic, and ink introduce collages of familiar and distorted imagery changing with light and perspective. Through years of work and study a comfort has developed layering and mixing varieties of materials and techniques. To this extent works are created start to finish with the sole goal of capturing the complete experience.
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Above, paintings by Kyle Epps depicts five experiences of the artist seeking clarity on Colonial Richmond’s African Burial Grounds and chattel slave auction sites. Here the creation of his Freestyle technique is made visible. An evolution of Neo-expressionism combining in-the-moment abstract expressionism painting, transcendental art, and hip-hop performance, freestyle painting is when the artist layers marks and symbols expressing his relation to the pace, flow, mood, vibe, and other non-visible realities. Like a freestyle rapper, the artistic performance focuses knowledge and experiences into colorful lines collaborating toward a complex cohesive presentation. The intent, maintain a flow listening and speaking in constant communication with the movement, space, and time of what is present in order document an unfiltered experience.
Painting SV Spilligion, (about Black-American Spirituality, Religion and Culture)
An Encore @ Tuesday Verses
Painting KW Heaven & Earth
Live @ Richmond's Armory House - The Black History & Cultural Museum
Live @ Tuesday Verses, Richmond, VA
More videos @ youtube.com/kylemepps