FREE HUMANITY INTERVIEW

Your artist name carries a powerful message and philosophy. The idea of "Free Humanity" feels just as relevant today as when you first adopted it. What inspired the name, and what does it represent to you as both an artist and a human being?

The idea for the name has been in my head for a long time growing up here in America.

An idea that stemmed from just being proud to be human- no race no, country, just humans as an interconnected whole.

Throughout your work, there is a recurring theme of consciousness, compassion, and challenging the narratives that shape modern society. Your mission of "taking back the humanity stolen from our minds by social manipulation and planting seeds of positivity through art and consciousness" continues to resonate. What message do you ultimately hope people take away from your work?

I try to convey a socially, politically, and spiritually aware message in all my pieces. I like to think of it as planting positive seeds in a world filled with ads trying to plant seeds of insecurity. Which makes people feel the need to buy this or that for material purposes only. This social manipulation is deeply seeded in the collective unconscious. I feel art is the only way to combat that. Public space is owned by the public, not by the corporations. I feel obligated to put up conscious artwork instead of contributing to the already over saturated over-sexualized ads and “art”.

Many of the figures you choose to portray are more than cultural icons—they are individuals whose lives and legacies have left a meaningful impact on the world. What draws you to women such as Audrey Hepburn, Frida Kahlo, and Yayoi Kusama, and what qualities do they embody that inspire your work?

I have had a long-running series of humanitarians, one of them being Audrey Hepburn.

Audrey Hepburn has been a reoccurring motif in my work, due to the not so commonly known fact that she was a big humanitarian and worked to feed young children in Ethiopia for UNICEF. My goal was to put a little bit of class amongst all the trash in Hollywood and LA. In a world of over-sexualized ads, I wanted to do a few murals and art pieces to show a classy, selfless actress, which seems to be a rarity in today’s modern times.

There are a few iconic women that I have painted. I am in the works of an oil painting of Lee Krasner, the wife of Jackson Pollock. She was a great painter and is the sole reason the value of art has skyrocketed.

The people I choose to paint I feel have contributed something contemporary to society like Frida Kahlo, Audrey Hepburn, and Yayoi Kusama. I can only hope to do the same.

Your work demonstrates a remarkable willingness to experiment, seamlessly moving between large-scale murals, stencil work, spray paint, abstraction, and fine art. How has your creative process evolved over the years, and what mediums or techniques continue to challenge and inspire you?

I started making simple one layer stencils and eventually evolved to a more photorealistic stencil style that tends to be a lot more intricate, deeply layered and labor intensive. I have been doing the notoriously known FH-Signature Style since 2010, perfecting my free hand spray paint background consisting of fat cap flared multi-colored hearts. The last ten months I have been oil painting and working on abstract work in the public sector and in the studio trying to tie those mediums together.

Most the work I do is so labor intensive that I have only a few pieces for sale every year.

I make sure not to do too much of the same thing to keep the process inspiring and fun. I feel too many artists are prisoners of their own style never unleashing their full creative potential as artists.