as Jammie Holmes was in his early 30s when he first learned about something called an “art gallery.” He’d grown up sketching — doodles on a pad, reproductions of family photographs, snatches of story told in pen and ink. But it never struck him as more than a fun way to kill time.
Holmes took notes. “I won’t do anything without planning,” he tells me, as I sit on a comfy 70s-era couch in the studio, and he pulls up a red rolling chair across from me. In person, he’s a curious mix of chatty and no-nonsense. “I can’t stand wasting time. Time is the only thing you can’t get back.”
In an interview with BET, Lee explained why the painting moved him. “Learning to ride a bike is one of the most innocent things in the world,” he tells the camera, “because you try, and you try, and you try. And then you finally get it.” The Floyd aerial demonstration gave him a reputation as a political artist, though he doesn’t think of himself that way. He sees himself as a “visual poet.” Human stories told through shapes and paint. Moments captured in acrylic. A group of men carrying a coffin. A man lying on an emerald couch, staring into what seems to be the void of his own future. AJammie Holmes' painting "Lefty," part of his 2023 solo exhibition at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.