Devin Troy Strother

Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, USA

Artist statement

I love being called a black person. The color of my skin is nowhere near what the actual pantone looks like. I’ve just always loved the idea that my identity is tied and associated with a color, and it happens to be one of my favorite colors to work with. Also, being a visual artist, I think it’s clear why I would love being marginalized down to a color. A color that has culturally established notions, ideas, and vibes attached to it. My most recent paintings are basically forms of self-portraits. These self-portraits are told through the guise of the studio, with the studio being a reflection of myself. This is also achieved by putting myself into a painting that exists somewhere inside of the still-life-like interiors, that mimic and mirror my own studio set up. I am formally and metaphorically inside all of the images. While my essence and some of my body parts inhabit the pictorial space, the idea of the portrait is subverted by objects and ephemera that populate my life as a painter. The objects start to become motifs that move from painting to painting, leaving a trail of my presence in them all. In creating my work, I’m constantly think about the landscape and trajectory of “black” contemporary painting and its relationship with portraiture, and how that relationship has been formed and molded by a mainly non-black audience. In my practice, performance represents an effort to transcend the conventional two-dimensional immortality inherent in portraiture. By...

Artwork