Kerry James Marshall

(c)image: Courtesy of Cheryl Lynn Bruce
Dark and Lovely, 1991
Painting , 35.5 x 35.5 cm
acrylic, collage, linen

Illuminated female faces surround the face of the woman in Dark and Lovely, which is also the name of a hair care product. These points of lustre and sparkle reference a kind of glossy beauty. Marshall himself says, these paintings are not about "blackness" per se, but these people are emphatically what they are: black figures.