Artist Statement: “I was trying to communicate an idea; I was trying to paint a very urban landscape. I was trying to make paintings different from the paintings that I saw a lot of at the time, which were mostly minimal, and they were highbrow and alienating, and I wanted to make very direct paintings that most people would feel the emotion behind when they saw them” (Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1985).
This quote best speaks to my purpose as an artist. Simply put, I want people to use their imaginations to share how they move through the world, whether similar or different than others. In fact, until I knew my Black was exhausted due to being trapped in a double pandemic, in 2020, I did not understand how to amplify my voice. It felt as if the world was collapsing. I needed an out, so escapism through art expression became my selfless choice. Repeated trial and error eventually led the creation of visual images, matched with written words, to explain my vantage point through an endarkened lens.
In 2021, I authored the book My Black is Exhausted. Forever in Pursuit of a Racist-free World Where Hashtags Don’t Exist (2021) and created my first eight piece digital art series, WITHIN, which is a visual portrayal of selected book chapters. While the focus of WITHIN is to present interpretative life abstractions about how one experiences the world, the purpose of the series is to use simplistic visuals to spark thoughts and deep conversations about overcoming identity-base glass ceilings.
The feeling was freeing.
Afterwards, I though I was done writing and being an artist, but the need to imagine was overwhelming so I continued, and created LOST in TRANSITION, which includes 10 new art pieces. This endeavor, unlike the first, is not a response to Black circumstance, but an attempt to explore unfounded presumptions of others. Frankly, I want participants to be mindful about how they feel and what they think when experiencing my artwork. I offer it as a son, partner, parent, brother, and advocate of the silenced. I found myself within it, can you do the same?
My artwork parallels contemporary illustrations of Aislinn Finnegan, Taj Francis, and Adeyemi Adegbesan whose work explores how Blackness unfurls somewhere between abstraction and Afrofuturism. However, my artwork is primarily influenced by Basquiat and his uncanny ability to render paintings that are perceived as child like, which reminds me that the difficulties of creation are boundless. That said, I invite you into my art disruption to have your thoughts complicated and hope this brave space that we share is fruitful.
Together we move in unison, one brush stroke at a time…
Artist Biography: Dr. Bryan Keith Hotchkins is a dreamer who has spent the majority of his life searching for an answer to the question “how would it feel to be Black without limitation?” Although he has yet to experience the feeling, his imagination of what it must be like is explored in his own racial realist digital art and symbolic paintings. Hotchkins, who was born and raised in Oklahoma City, first began to question the roots of his Black identity after finding out was adopted on his 10th birthday. As a youth, Bryan attended integrated K-12 schools, but envied the all-black experiences of his parents, Eady and James, who often shared prideful stories about living in Sand Town segregated communities during the late 1950’s. In the 1990s, prior to graduating from Southern Method University, he created the Gospel Hip Hop group Divine Words, which was inspired by a strict Black Baptist Church upbringing.
As an undergraduate, he took a Black & White Race course with professor Clarence Glover, which shifted the arc of Hotchkins’ life. Glover mentored Hotchkins and encouraged him to explore what it meant to be Black while navigating racist educational systems. Shortly thereafter, Bryan pledged historically Black Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. and became president-elect of the Association of Black Students, in the same semester. These leadership roles prepared Hotchkins for the real world and would later prove instrumental to his understandings about what society requires of Black men. Following four years of college, Hotchkins earned a masters in Human Relations (University of Oklahoma, 2003) and Doctor of Philosophy degree in Educational Leadership and Policy (University of Utah, 2013). A technically gifted writer and skilled researcher, Hotchkins later became a professor at Texas Tech University (2016), where his research focuses on how people of African descent mitigate the racial traumas they experience while being leaders in organizations.
In 2020, after watching the murder of George Floyd, he created eight striking artistic images about how people of African descent experience life in America. This series, WITHIN, was released in 2021, in tandem with his highly insightful book My Black is Exhausted. Forever in Pursuit of a Racist-free World Where Hashtags Don’t Exist. The subsequent series, LOST in TRANSITION, includes 10 new art pieces that are included in his ALL HUMAN RIGHTS RESERVED™ tour throughout 2024-25. The tour creates pathways to healing for those who view themselves as existing in the margins of society by engaging in interactive lecture sessions where Hotchkins teaches attendees to actively engage with identity, cultural body autonomy, and race by using art. As a son of Hip Hop culture, he appreciates the value of non-confirmative expression and understands the worth of art created with intention.
Since delving into art, Hotchkins now has a broader view of the world that informs his most profound series to date: WHO WOULD YOU BE OUTSIDE of YOUR COLONIZED MIND? This is his first foray into Afrofuturism. This series offers varied visual answers to the namesake question by exploring how Black optimism looks when uninhibited, absent of the familiarities of his Oklahoma childhood where he learned about the Tulsa Race Massacre (1921) and development of up to 50 historic Black towns in Indian Territory between 1865 and 1920. Ultimately, Bryan wants his work to “empower people to find the brokenness within themselves and use it to amplify their voices one image at time. Being misunderstood is easy. Being treated badly an expected to accept it, because of it, is not. So instead, I draw to create utopia!”