I look at Architectural Digest and home decor magazines all the time. Some of those rooms are gorgeous. But sometimes they look like nobody actually lives there. The furniture's perfect. The lighting's perfect. The art is hung exactly where it's supposed to be. And sometimes the art isn't saying anything at all.
No character. No personality. Like it went up because there was an empty wall, not because someone picked it on purpose.
When I walk into a space, I want something that grabs me. Makes me curious. Why is this here? What were they thinking when they bought it? I'm not asking because I'm skeptical — I'm asking because something caught me and I want to know what.
I don't want my work disappearing into somebody's decorating scheme. I want it to have presence.
My faces are obscure on purpose. You don't get them right away. You sit with them. You start noticing things, deciding what they mean to you. That's what I love about faces — you look at one and start asking questions. Who is that? What happened to them? What am I seeing that somebody else might not?
With Unapologetic Faces, that's the reaction I'm after. I want the work to stay alive in the room.
Living with it changes the experience
I live with my own pieces. I see them every single day, and I still catch something new — a detail I missed, the way light hits it differently, or honestly, it's just me. My mood. My day.
That's what people don't understand about original art until they own it. You live with it.
I love watching guests react, too. They look. They ask questions. They have something to say. That's the whole point.
I'll argue this forever: my art isn't decoration. These are statement pieces. When I'm sitting in my apartment, it's not the couch giving me a feeling. Not the TV. Not the rug. It's the art. That's what gives the room its sense of arrival — that elegance. I'm not a millionaire, but my home can feel like it. That matters to me.
The details matter too
My palette is black, red, and white. I wanted my apartment to feel rich — a deep black feel. I had white ceramics and white dining chairs, so I took them out on the balcony and spray-painted them black myself. Didn't need to replace a thing. I just needed the space to feel like me.
That kind of small decision changes a whole room. The art ties it together — maybe there's black in the piece and small black objects scattered around, maybe a color from the work shows up again in the furniture. It doesn't have to match exactly. It just has to feel intentional.
Art changes how a home gets read
I live uptown, in Harlem. People carry assumptions about what an uptown apartment is supposed to look like.
I once showed a photo of mine to someone at my mother's nursing home, and she said, "Wow, this looks like one of those downtown apartments." I knew exactly what she meant. It was the color scheme, the way everything worked together — but the art was doing most of that work.
Art can make a modest room feel expensive. A plain room feel intentional. A room feel like yours. When I first started hanging my own work, I had that reaction myself. I looked around and thought: this looks good.
It felt sexy. I say that phrase constantly — grown and sexy. That's how I see the work. It has attitude. It gives a room something a couch or a flatscreen never will.
Why does the art always come last?
Rooms get designed backward all the time. Furniture first, then the rug, then the lighting — and only once everything's finished does someone look at the bare wall and go, "Okay, now we need art."
Why last? Start with a piece you love and build the room around it. Where does your eye land when you walk in? Does the piece need breathing room? What happens when light hits it? Does it clash with everything else — and if it does, does that tension actually make the room better?
Those are the questions worth asking. Not whether the art matches the pillows.
Not everything has to match
I like a little friction in a room. Something contemporary next to something old. Something polished beside something rough. A quiet room, one piece that stops you cold.
When everything matches too perfectly, nothing in the room has personality. People don't actually collect their lives that way — you pick things up over time, keep something because of where you found it, get given a piece, buy something because you couldn't stop thinking about it. That history is what gives a home its character. Nobody falls in love with a painting because it was "the exact shade" they needed. There's always a reaction first. Something got them.
Furniture changes. Walls get repainted. People move. Good art moves with you.
Scale is more than inches
I work with physical dimensions constantly, so scale is never abstract to me. A piece can be too small for its wall. Hung too high. Crowded by furniture. Flattened by bad lighting.
But scale isn't only measurements. A small piece can hold an entire room. A large one can be surprisingly quiet. You have to actually look at the work in front of you — what someone sees first walking in, how close they can get, whether it still holds attention from across the room, not just standing right in front of it. That's how I think about placement.
Buy something you want to keep seeing
Know what you're buying. Ask about the materials. Ask about the artist. Ask how it was made and how to care for it.
Then ask yourself one more question: do I want to keep looking at this?
Because once the thrill of buying something new wears off, that's what's left. You pass it every morning. You see it on good days and bad ones. You might notice something in it two years from now that you never saw the day you bought it.
When I finish a piece, I know exactly what I put into it. Once it belongs to somebody else, I don't control that relationship anymore. Their life becomes part of how they see it. The room becomes part of it. Time becomes part of it.
I make the work. What it turns into in somebody's home — that's theirs.