“There’s a piece that I’ve used on multiple occasions, and this is going to be the fourth iteration of it. It’s a profile piece of a young Black woman. I actually wrote a song about it. One of my coworkers asked me to do a commission piece of her in my style. She had a pretty cool hair style, so I took a profile photo of her and turned it into art.
It was originally made in black and white. She owns the original. The piece started off as a sketch, like a blueprint. I went back and traced it on some watercolor paper, inked it with pen and ink and then I scanned it into the computer.
|
|
|
It’s futuristic. She has a lot of designs in her bodysuit; she’s adorned with abstract shapes that connect from her hair to her body.
I’m so fascinated with character design. When I create a character of a Black woman, I always want to make her look otherworldly, like you can’t take your eyes off of her. That piece is like my Mona Lisa. Everytime you see the image, it’s done in a totally different way.”
About the artist
Nathaniel Alphonse Joseph Landry is a Baton Rouge freelance artist who makes afrofuturistic, abstract and multimedia art. His longtime love for anime, manga and comic books is reflected in his work’s bright colors, hard lines and imaginative characters illustrated on skateboards, wooden planks and canvases.
Landry has pursued art his entire life. His father was an artist, and his mother supported Landry’s passions by “pushing him into his gift.” As a child, he often went to museums, summer camps and comic book stores.
He received his bachelor’s degree in fine art from Southern University and his master’s in sequential arts at the Savannah College of Art and Design.
Once he switched his concentration to sequential arts, a form of art where the content is presented in a specific order to tell a story, he felt like he truly found his place in the art world.
“I took some elective classes in the comic book department and I realized that’s where I was supposed to be mentally, physically and spiritually,” he says.
|
|
|
After he graduated, Landry returned to Baton Rouge, where he taught art classes for middle school students and at Southern University.
During the pandemic, he decided to follow his dream of becoming a full-time artist and has been creating and sharing his work ever since. He has shown his work at various pop-ups and art exhibitions at galleries such as Elizabethan Gallery, Healthcare Gallery and Wellness Spa, and LSMSA Gallery in Natchitoches. Follow him on Instagram at @alphonse_jozeff.
This article was originally published in the September 2022 issue of 225 magazine.