10 Black Artists You Need to Follow on Instagram
In honor of Black History Month, we’re celebrating some of the talented local artists we know and love following. Their practices are varied and vast, articulating the beauty and complexities that exists within their lived experience.
Social media is an ubiquitous part of our culture, and Instagram is the platform of choice for most visual artists. Not only have the artists below made a name for themselves in the field, they’ve created iconic works that have graced our institutions and engaged communities throughout Greater Boston and beyond. True to form, their Instagram feeds are generous offerings of their work and studio musings that any artist or art lover would love to see.
Marla McLeod, photo courtsey the artist
Marla McLeod uses paintings, drawings, textiles, and sculptures to celebrate the power of the Black body. McLeod’s solo exhibition, Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, was held at Essex Art Center in 2022. We’re still thinking of the grandiose charcoal portraits and gem-encrusted tapestries that graced our galleries.
Marla McLeod, Alabaster Box, 2023, charcoal on board, 60 x 48 inches
Paul S. Briggs, photo by Michael Brandt
Paul Briggs' Cell Personae represent the walls and bars used to disproportionately incarcerate Black men in the United States. Coils and bars burst and weave through the cell’s planes, pushing ideas of what it means to be inside or outside. We featured some of these works in Shaping Things, an exhibition of socially informed ceramic works, held at Essex Art Center in 2021. A former Lawrence resident, Briggs recently joined the faculty of Alfred University's School of Art and Design. His work is on view as part of The Myth of Normal at MassArt Art Museum until May 19, 2024.
Cell Persona, 2019, stoneware clay, 9 x 6 x 5 inches
Cicely Carew, photo by Tyler Noctyrn
Cicely Carew’s colorful works include nebulous floating sculptures, exuberant acrylic paintings, and luminous digital collages. On Instagram, her artworks are accompanied by soulful words that speak to Carew’s spiritual path, affirming her works as meditations or forms of prayer. Carew was recently awarded the ICA Boston’s James and Audrey Foster Prize, which included a three-person exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston. You can currently see her work in “Painting &” at Boston University Art Galleries until March 8.
Cicely Carew, Ambrosia, installation at the Prudential Building, 2021, photo courtesy Boston Globe
Anthony Peyton Young, photo by Marla McLeod
Anthony Peyton Young memorializes Black bodies and Black experiences through drawing, painting, and ceramics. His recent work leans into Surrealism and expresses Black love and joy. Young has received the SMFA/Tufts University Traveling Fellowship and the Walter Feldman Fellowship for Emerging Artists. He juried the exhibition “Face” at Gallery 263 in Cambridge, MA which runs through March 16.
Earthly Delights: Unexpected Friendships, 2023, Bleach and oil on canvas, 30 × 24 inches
Jamal Thorne, photo by Edward Boches
Jamal Thorne uses drawing to investigate and visualize the nature of performed identity. His layered renderings blur references from popular culture and religious iconography. His process is both additive and subtractive, working back and forth between mark making and erasure.
Jamal Thorne, Co-Defendant No. 4, 2023, Found materials, acrylic paint, cardboard, 28 x 52 inches
Chanel Thervil, photo by Mel Taing
Chanel Thervil’s work revolves around healing and empowerment for communities of color. The artist’s distinctive line work and cut out shapes are signatures of her mixed media portraits and murals. Her building-spanning painting, “Toques De Sabor/Hints of Flavor” can be found at the intersection of Essex Street and Broadway in Lawrence.
Chanel Thervil, Toques De Sabor/ Hints of Flavor, 2020, house paint and spray paint, 38 x 22 feet
Karmimadeebora McMillan, photo by Melissa Blackall
Drawing from historical archives, sci-fi, and Afrofuturism, Karmimadeebora McMillan reimagines Black histories through painting, drawing, and sculpture. Her solo show, "Wandering stars…for whom it is reserved…the blackness…the darkness…forever” is on view at Montserrat College of Art until March 6.
Karmimadeebora McMillan, Generations, 2023, acrylic collage on canvas 68 x 89 inches
photo courtesy the artist
Marlon Forrester explores the ritual of sports and the ways that basketball and masculinity often usurp Black culture. His work takes many forms: painting, performance, playground design, and public art. His solo exhibition, Skyward Bound, is currently on view at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art in New Haven, CT until March 31.
Marlon Forrester, If Black Saints Could Fly 23, 2021, Installation view, ICA/Boston
Dell Hamilton, photo by Kerry Constantino
Dell Hamilton traverses performance, painting, video, and installation. In her embodied works, the artist plays with identity, disguise, and deception. Dell was a recipient of the ICA/Boston’s 2021 Foster Prize. She recently curated Dialogues, Diasporas, and Detours through Africa at Fitchburg Art Museum.
Dell Hamilton, Blues Blank Black, 2020, performance at the Hood Museum
Lavaughan Jenkins, photo courtsey the artist
Lavaughan Jenkins' recent works celebrate fashion, the Black body, and Black women who have influenced him. Working on flat surfaces and in the round, the materiality of the paint itself carries weight and meaning, evoking the complexity of the human experience and expressing the artist's memories and ideas. When Lavaughan was an artist-in-residence at the Addison Gallery of American Art, he hosted studio visits with Essex Art Center's staff and welcomed young people from Lawrence to learn about his practice.
Lavaughan Jenkins, You’re why I love tomorrow, 2022, oil on panel, 30 x 22.5 inches
