Adrienne Brown-David

Adrienne Brown-David

Adrienne Brown-David

Water Valley

Mississippi

USA

My work captures black childhood that is pure and uninterrupted. My children and their real life experiences are often the subject. The need to capture the reality of their specific childhood and the freedom that comes with it is one that drives me. It is essential that the work illuminates an often under-recognized narrative: that black childhood is as important and as beautiful as every other child's. The moments captured are even more precious because black childhood is too often viewed through a smaller lens and for a shorter time than mainstream culture recognizes and articulates. Society tends to cut short the childhood of black and brown children. It has been shown that black children are often viewed as older and less innocent than other children of similar age. What does this mean for my children? My goal is to create work that shatters that myth. By both fostering an environment where my children can remain children and capturing that environment in my art I am attempting to create a new narrative.

As my children get older, and their childhood becomes less about innocence, and more about solidifying the women they will become, the mood of the work shifts. I am attempting to capture that growth as I see it everyday. Sometimes that looks like attitudes, eye rolling, and slumped shoulders, but other times that looks like elaborate designs in their hair, headwraps and big hoop earrings. These shifts in their growth are just as important to the women that they will become as their ability to have free and innocent childhoods. Because of that, it is equally important to capture those moments. I want my work to reinforce the humanization of black youth and how that relates to growing up in America.