Blake C Aarens

Because my family fled violence and poverty in New York when I was a preteen and settled in suburban Illinois, I grew up with the duality of African American traditions at home and white pop culture in school. I am a Black, Queer, 61 year-old woman who has decades of practice in code-switching. I grapple with the issue of how my work can or should reflect my race. I sit on the shoulders of my artist Foremothers: those women who scribbled on cave walls, and drew in the mud, and painted their bodies. When I pick up my tools to put paint, cloth, jewels, paper, metal leaf, even sand and rocks on the canvas, I am delving deeply into myself to express something universal . Every stroke of paint, every scrap of media I use comes from the direct experience of my Blackness, my womanhood, my queer identity, and my neurodivergence. You will see me in my work; it is my hope that you will also see yourself.