Jamea Richmond-Edwards

Portfolio of Artwork 938-942

Jamea Richmond-Edwards, writes her gallerist and art dealer Myrtis Bedolla, “offers a repertoire of portraits of black women drawn using ink and graphite.” Bedolla continues her 2014 observations on the work of the artist:

Her lionized figures are portrayed in regal poses, with eyes that possess alluring gazes and bodies adorned with rich tapestries of color and patterns made of sequins, rhinestones, paper, and textiles. Their clothing, which mimics designer fashion, conceals their vulnerability and weaknesses, while elevating them from the disdained to the revered.

In its direct and pointed descriptions, Bedolla’s observation is neither from Jamea Richmond-Edwards’s self-reflexive artist statement nor from the statements she made about her work to me in a telephone interview (July 28, 2015). Written in 2014, her artist statement reads as follows:

In The Cost of Making Her Run: Fear, Flight, Freedom women seeking refuge from personal struggles and oppression find peace and comfort in a world concealed in darkness. They dwell in a dream-like existence, a place that is both eerie and ethereal. By day, they are invisible to “non-believers,” those who fail to acknowledge their potential and gifts. By night, they convene under the enigmatic night sky to commune in ritual and celebration while drawing strength from their ancestors.

In creating this body of work, I drew inspiration from my life experiences, family narratives, and the legacy of Harriett Tubman. Rendered in ink on paper and board are multi-generational women, each a metaphor for a trial and triumph. Their gaze conveys self-discovery and vulnerability as they seek to claim their place in the world. In the series of photographs, “This Time, She Ain’t Afraid,” I am depicting a reenactment of Harriett Tubman’s escape to freedom. As with the women I’ve created, we embody Harriett’s spirit to overcome our fears, through flight, to find our freedom.

When she speaks of her work and her intentions in it, Jamea Richmond-Edwards’s comments always return to her family and herself, her ancestors and the maker of the art, the world as we know it today and the past as received knowledge. All of these are intertwined in not only her subject and aesthetic practices but also in the world she represents in her artworks—as she repeatedly reminds us.

In my July 28, 2015, interview with her, I asked Jamea Richmond-Edwards to describe her work:

ROWELL:

How do you describe your work?

RICHMOND-EDWARDS:

I create mixed media portraiture. It primarily consists of drawing and collage. I, myself, would say that I interchange between being a painter and being a draftsman. When I say “painter,” I’m thinking about my understanding and fascination with Romare Bearden, who considered himself a painter even with the collage work that he did. Prior to some of the work I have been doing for the past five or six years, I was an oil painter. I still approach my work from a painterly perspective, but I would say, on just technicality to educate, I now create mixed-media works.

ROWELL:

If you were asked on this day to create a new artist statement, what would you say?

RICHMOND-EDWARDS:

So I have two bodies of work that I am currently working on. In one body of work I’m examining my brother’s death. He was murdered a year ago, and so I wanted to do a series of portraits that are dedicated to him. And these were eight drawings on mylar. They were scrolls ultimately. They were created on mylar and what I did is this: I imagined various conversations, different moments that we have had in our lives, and I contextualized it on these scrolls. Interestingly, although these images sort of represent my brother, I used women. So they are sort of these avatars. I used the same maybe three or four models on all of my work. And so that’s one body of work. Another body of work I’ve worked on is this: I create...