The Monae Lisa: What started as a way to calm me down after these gut-wrenching, emotional, hopeful and crushing days is becoming a series about replacing our history—in these paintings, through appropriation, as our culture has been appropriated. Though more in the vein of alternate reality a la N.K. Jemisin, the title is inspired by Janelle Moane and her radically imaginative Afrofuturism (and I love her for big-upping our non-binary siblings). Also, a big thanks to BUST Magazine for featuring women’s art on your back page and to Essence Magazine for your winter issue with Regina King about black women in the art world - both are inspiring and needed (especially when all you wanna do is huddle in a ball and cry)!

After George Floyd's death I was paralyzed. Not because police brutality against black and brown people is rare, but because all of a sudden, it wasn't: it was on every news notification, website ad, everywhere. And I am glad for this moment when people are listening, because to communities of color, experiencing racism is nothing new, it's every day. Having to think about taking your phone out in a store, the professor who priases the white girl for saying what you just said, the subtle sign people give that they think you are LESS THAN. The not so subtle signs: the confederate flag hung out on a porch in New Jersey--never a member of the "Glorious South"--after Trump was elected.

One of my instinctual coping mechanisms in life is escapism: since I was a child there's been a stack of books in my hands and now that I'm an adult, binge watching is a high-level skill of mine. But for a black woman who wants to watch shows with multicultural casts, it can be tough to find representation. White Collar is one of my cozy shows that I watch when I need to get away from the despair of reality: NYC, art, heists, and awesome actors (like Tim DeKay, who also stars in another of my favorite shows, Carnivale). In White Collar, the astoundingly beautiful mansion where one of the main characters lives is owned by a glamorous black woman, June. To see June in episode 1 as the owner of one of NYC's rarest and most beautiful properties alone made me knew I'd like the show. Of the seven main cast members, three are black or multiracial (Diana, Jones and June). That means a lot. Main character Neal is played by one of Hollywood's rare out gay men Matt Bomer, and character Diana is a lesbian who is defined by her actions, not her orientation.

White Collar is immersed in art, and as both a lover of visual art and a New Yorker who spend my teen years sneaking into the Guggenheim (wasn't going to wait for pay-what-you-will-night!) and paying the Metropolitan Museum of Art a nickel for admission (until I realized my college ID got me in for free without the indignity), the art world is filled with whiteness. Not that there isn't great non-white art: you see it as soon as you enter the Met. Wings of indigenous art, Egyptian art, Japanese and Persian art. But that's not what we study in school and see in movies (save the African masks mounted to show a character is "in touch") and it's not what's on the top 100 art posters on Amazon.

This painting based on a reproduction of Le bonnet de Bain by Jean-Pierre Cassigneul that's featured in one of the main sets of White Collar. I love that painting (better than the original Cassigneul!) and have spent hours looking at it as Neal and Mozzie and Peter hatch schemes. The thought came one bingey afternoon that I wish there was more black representation in classic art. I can't change the past, but I can repaint history.