What strikes me most about the joy in my black women art is how revolutionary it still feels — because Black women are so often expected to perform struggle instead of celebrating pleasure.
Look at Mickalene Thomas’s work for a moment. Her subjects lounge in rhinestoned glory, relaxed and radiant. That’s the same energy I try to channel in my portraits: Black women existing in joy without needing to justify it, without needing to earn it. Just being, fully and without apology.
Joy as Birthright
My Black Women Empowerment Art captures something I think is quietly radical — Black women simply being happy. Not overcoming obstacles. Not surviving hardship. Just experiencing joy as their natural state, as something they were born into and fully deserve.
The stars surrounding my subjects are celebrations, not compensations. They’re there because joy attracts light. Painting Black women in states of pure pleasure disrupts the tired narratives that reduce their stories to struggle alone. In my work, happiness isn’t a reward handed out after suffering — it’s a birthright that was always theirs.
Finding Historical Happiness
Even during the Harlem Renaissance, joy in Black art was complicated. Augusta Savage sculpted serious leaders. Meta Warrick Fuller created powerful but rarely playful pieces. The weight of representation often crowded out the lightness of everyday lived experience, and that lightness rarely made it onto the canvas.
So I made a decision: my painting would add playfulness back to power. The smiles in my portraits come from genuine contentment, not performance — this is what empowering Black women art looks like when it’s rendered in color and light. Joy has always existed alongside struggle. It just rarely got documented. I want to change that.
Visual Celebrations
Kehinde Wiley places Black bodies against abundantly flowered backgrounds, creating joy through visual richness. Amy Sherald uses pastels that feel like laughter to me. My Black female artwork uses stars in a similar spirit — joy manifested as light, as color, as an atmosphere you can feel even through the screen.
Digital tools let me paint joy that seems to move. Stars that appear to twinkle at the edges of a natural afro. Eyes that sparkle with unmistakable life. Colors that pulse with warmth and energy. This sense of movement mirrors how joy actually feels in the body — active, expanding, contagious. It’s not a still emotion, and I never want to paint it as one.
Spreading Happiness
When Bisa Butler creates her quilted portraits, she uses colors that sing — bright oranges, electric blues, patterns that dance across the fabric. My work follows that same tradition of visual celebration, of choosing abundance over austerity when depicting Black life. I’d rather a piece feel alive than restrained.
Digital art also spreads joy instantly, carrying Afro Black Women Art that showcases timeless beauty across thousands of screens at once. Joy multiplies through shares and reposts, reaching people who may never set foot in a gallery but who absolutely deserve to see themselves reflected in radiant, celebratory imagery. A piece like this also makes a meaningful gift — for a sister stepping into something new, a friend who needs reminding of her own light, or a brother who wants to fill his home with images that honor the women he loves.
Practicing Pleasure
Creating art that centers joy takes intentional practice. I’ve had to unlearn the habit of reaching for hardship as a subject, because for so long the art world rewarded Black artists who documented trauma. Painting pleasure can feel almost rebellious — and honestly, that’s part of why I keep doing it.
After 400 hours on my Royalty Series, I’ve come to believe that joy is our natural state once we’re free from suppression. The women in my portraits aren’t performing happiness — they’re revealing it, letting it pour out through their expressions, their posture, the light that seems to gather around them. This work makes that revelation visible to anyone who needs to see it.
Commission a portrait that captures your joy, not your struggle. Let me paint you in your happiness, surrounded by stars that celebrate your light. Starting at $2,000 — and the next pieces in this series are already taking shape in my mind.