I first saw Kehinde Wilde’s work in the Brooklyn Museum's Free First Saturday. I was taken by surprised, even startled, a black men set under a renaissance theme. His work was absolutely breathtaking. 

When I first started painting, I drew myself constantly and I never understood why. It was when I was influenced by Wilde that I comprehended the theme of it all. I wish being vain was my excuse. However, in all honestly, my self-portraits are my way of appreciating myself in ways that I wasn’t able to before. My extensive self-portraits started this summer when I was exposed to the negative stigmatism around dreads. To have dreadlocks was to be hideous or unsanitary. As a young black woman with dreads, I looked to distinguish the two. Now, Kehinde Wiley influenced my work, in his efforts to recreate our idealistic art, into making art “that looks like me and occupy that field of power”. I delve to take that a step further, to find people who actually look like me. A brown skinned girl with blue dreads, and that's just surface level. The person described in the latter is not museum-worthy and I work to make her seem that way. My art is for me than anyone else. It is my way of falling in love with the image I see every day. Through these self-portraits, I beautify dreadlocks in a way that media hasn't. My dreads is something to exemplify, not cover. I also challenge stereotypes challenging both women and blacks to better understand why they exist and why we tend to use them.