"When I am asked what kind of work I do, my answer is that I am a storyteller, in picture form, who tries to reflect and interpret the lives and experience of the people that gave me life. When I am asked who I am, I say that I am an African who was born in America. This answer connects me specifically with my past and present. I therefore bring to my art a quality that is rooted in the culture of Africa and is expanded by the experience of being Black in America. I use the vehicle of 'fine art' and 'illustration' as a viable expression of form, yet strive always to do this from an African perspective, and African world view, and above all to tell the African story. The struggle to create artwork, as well as to live creatively under any conditions and, like my ancestors, survive embodies my particular heritage in America."

Through the centuries Africa's powerful celebratory rites have always acted as a spiritually strong balancing force to counter the painful experience of slavery. Clearly evident in Black music, Black dance, and the world of athletics, wherever there is a level playing field, we innovate, we improvise within that restrictive form, then transcend it, raising the level of excellence. In the words of writer Paule Marshall, "We are a people who transformed humiliating experiences into creative ones."

As a story teller in picture form, as an African who was born in America, how could I do anything else but try and live up to that legacy and become a vehicle for this profound, dramatic history to pass through.