@Ali4rmtx

The boy in the painting is my little cousin from New Orleans. I decided to pick this particular picture and paint it like this because throughout my life I can honestly say visiting my family gave me a real experience of where my people come from, and the real life problems that people go through that I never had to endure.. Seeing a kid as young as him in this picture with a pose like this makes one think of possibly poverty, misconstrued priorities, and a delinquent. But in fact aside from all of that, here what you see is a lifestyle or which maybe later called a phase if grown out of. He is painted black, white, and grey resembling a statue-esk quality, motionless,... "stuck." Many people that grow up in places like these either grow and learn or will stay "stuck" in this lifestyle/mindset. Everything else in the painting is painted in color to symbolize the things that are seen as importance to a lifestyle/mindset like this.