PaulaWPArts

Paula Walters Parker is an artist who loves to experiment with materials and see where they lead her. From everyday foraged pigments and natural textures to bold colors and layered strokes, she lets her art unfold as a playful dialogue, exploring how each element interacts and surprises. Drawing on family stories, music, and daily experiences, her work is a celebration of resilience, curiosity, and connection.

These paintings are part of a series that celebrates the struggles, experiences, and strength of the black female body. I wanted to highlight the grace with which we carry all that we have to walk through life, things forced upon us and burdens not belonging to us. This painting is a part of a series of works that address the absence of black bodies in traditional art narratives. In this series, I wanted to include the presence of black people in stories where we fit, but have been intentionally extinguished and deleted, thereby 'conning' some people into believing that black people can't be in these stories. I want us to see ourselves in the sacred places and stories of the past and know that we belong in the ones to come, despite what others think. By turning him into an icon, I refuse disappearance. I insist that his life mattered beyond the circumstances of his death. This work is an offering. A belated love letter. A reckoning with my own limits and the brutal consequences of a world that demands Black resilience without providing Black care.