Sami Miranda

I am a figurative artist, who paints the people around me or ones who live in the memories shared by those people. Whether those portraits are embroidered, screen-printed or painted they look to capture the story an expression or stance can tell. My work highlights folks, most of whom make their home in DC and some who have found home in Madrid, Mexico City or La Habana. They are folks who I have had a chance to share space with, folks who have shared stories, meals, a bottle of wine or rum with me. They are folks who make music, make art, write poetry.  Folks who serve drinks, study law or literature.  Folks who grew up in the neighborhoods we now find trendy, when black and brown and poor was the reality.  Folks who immigrated from home, to countries that did not always welcome them but in which they made a home anyway. Not all people are folk, folk are the people who listen, who share, who find a place for you. My portraits are of folk. And because part of my artistic practice is participating in conversations.  I find myself in conversations with artists who become co-collaborators in the making of art.  The products of these conversations are varied, and can take the shape of poems recorded with music, short documentaries that tell the story through my poetry, the subjects music and the cinematographers eye and art that is started by one artist and completed by another.