Antwoine Washington: Life Be Lifing @ COL Gallery
"Life Be Lifing is an expression of what it means to move through life when it doesn’t slow down, soften up, or make sense. This body of work sits in the tension between survival and understanding, where grief, pressure, and everyday reality collide."
Antwoine Washington's (b.1980) path to becoming an artist was neither linear nor predetermined. Before committing to painting full-time, he worked as a mail carrier with the United States Postal Service. The rhythm of walking routes, moving through neighborhoods, and witnessing the everyday intimacies of domestic life sharpened his sensitivity to family, place, and the quiet gestures that shape belonging. In 2018, Washington survived a stroke that forced him to pause and re-evaluate his life and direction. The experience deepened his understanding of care, vulnerability, and the fragility of the everyday—elements that now resonate throughout both his portraits of Black familial life and his more abstract paintings.
Washington often works with house paint, a medium intimately tied to domestic space and everyday labor. The flat, matte surfaces it creates recall memory—rooms lived in, spaces cared for, walls touched over time. Using house paint resists hierarchies of "fine art" materials and aligns his practice with the lived textures of home, kinship, and working-class histories. It is both a formal decision and a political one: to honor the beauty of the spaces where Black life unfolds.
"My work is inspired by the Black experience in America," he says. "Through drawing and painting, I am focused on creating realistic storytelling portraits—bold, colorful work that shows the emotion of what Black Americans go through on a day-to-day basis. The past often reminds us how far we've come as a society, given this nation's original sin concerning racial inequalities."
Washington traces his earliest artistic influence to his uncle, whose detailed drawings arrived in letters from prison. That formative recognition—that creativity can survive even within systems of confinement—continues to animate his work. Drawing from the Harlem Renaissance, West African visual languages, and the aesthetics of vernacular photography, his paintings foreground kinship and care.
Washington speaks openly about how his stroke reshaped his life and practice. "Suddenly, half my body was numb. My memory wasn't the same. Creating art became my rehabilitation, my way of reconstructing myself. Each piece is a testament to survival, to transformation." Grief and resilience are central to his current work, especially in his memorial portraits honoring his late grandmothers—matriarchs who held the emotional architecture of family.
Washington was born in Pontiac, Michigan and earned his BA in Studio Art from Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His work has been presented at the Cleveland Museum of Art, moCa Cleveland, the Cincinnati Art Museum, SPACES, Zygote Press, Worthington Yards, the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve, and Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. His public commissions include murals for Cleveland Public Square, MetroHealth Hospital, and the Cleveland Walls International Mural Festival. In 2019, he received the Cleveland Arts Prize Verge Fellowship. Washington currently lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio and is represented by Shaheen Gallery.
Artist Statement
"Life Be Lifing is an expression of what it means to move through life when it doesn’t slow down, soften up, or make sense. This body of work sits in the tension between survival and understanding, where grief, pressure, and everyday reality collide. These paintings are the result of lived experience. They come with memories of losing family and friends, missed opportunities, and the quiet battles of being misunderstood, judged, or isolated. There’s frustration here, as much with human interaction and systems, and expectations, but also honesty.
There is nothing filtered or cleaned up for comfort. With layered material, forceful color, and raw composition I create surfaces that reflect the complexity of emotion. There are parts that feel weighty and dense, like moments that won’t move. Others become candid, looking for breath, clarity, or release. The work doesn’t attempt to resolve these feelings, it holds them.
Life Be Lifing isn’t one of having answers. It’s about realizing that life happens in real time, often without permission, and learning how to exist in that truth. This exhibition encourages you to sit with discomfort, recognize shared experiences, and find connection in the unspoken parts of being human."