JJ Pinckney's work and ethos display a swirling companionship of freedom and service. Strolling around his Crown Heights studio, Found Wonder, JJ shed light on both his capability, philosophy, and the intentionality of his imagination-fueled expressions.

With only two years behind him as an artist, JJ has a particular advantage the classically trained do not. Most of our definitions of freedom are defined in rebellion to authority, but JJ's is pure. He isn't beholden to any rules or no-no's and, therefore, is led by exploration and instinct. JJ doesn't stagnate in magical intuition, however. He recognizes that all of the greatest greats we're incredibly studious. Even as a D1 football player, he'd watch film to develop his game. Creating his best work demands the same discipline and intention.

A nuanced balance of novelty and tradition finds itself in Afro Samurai, a large-scale piece where JJ employs the Dadaist technique, "Automatic Drawing," before he even knew what to call it. JJ lets the brush, crayons, spray paint, and countless other mediums lead him. Using his unconscious mind, JJ allows the painting to unearth itself through movement and energy. The "pandemic painting" was a confident and raw moment in JJ's life, and it's clear to see.

From the unconscious mind to hyper-awareness, JJ recognizes his strength is his voice. His clear and pointed vision can deliver poignant messages of illumination. This is his greater purpose, This is the service his creative freedom leads him to.

Our free-flowing conversation exposed his intellectual nature, not only in art history and their most significant leaders but human history.

Smoking Walking Down Marcus Garvey Boulevard depicts Marcus Garvey in a decapitated state, limbs estranged from his body living as merely a name on a street sign in so many young(and old) lives. JJ comments on the watering down of Black leaders and how their messages of strength and fortitude are twisted into near-submissive liberalism by America's brilliantly malicious PR strategy - eventually beating heroes down to patronizing and useless symbols.

The messaging starts early, as Sesame Street shows. "It's really about the miseducation that black people have to endure." The reptilian teacher seems to have just finished a lecture and is in a slack-jawed state in a state of euphoria. Its head points upward reveling in the misery of the mentally and physically flattened boy that lies on the floor. His only relief from the throws of subconscious oppression is a panel of comic books. Mirroring life, the boy's entertainment sedates what would likely be a visceral rejection of mistruths.

The culmination of JJ's depiction of a reality written to befit a falsely superior culture culminates in The Extraction of Black Genius with a klansman poking at what feels like the viewer's very own brain. The rich red drives the near rageful discontent JJ feels and fuels the choice we all have: to be one more flattened spirit drowned in mistruths like the one resting at the bottom of the painting or to, as JJ put's it, "pull up the text and read it for yourself."

JJ Pinckney: “Freedom, unfiltered.”

Keilley Banks: Forging Community and Connection Through Art