The first major publication on Baltimore-based painter Jerrell Gibbs, whose contemplative portraits of Black sitters thrum with a vivid sense of place and reflect the complexity and emotional depth of everyday Black life.

This book captures a prolific period of self-examination and observation for contemporary artist Jerrell Gibbs (b. 1988). Known for his luminously rendered, expressionistic oil paintings, Gibbs uses the figure as a dynamic and recurring motif to explore themes of Black masculinity, fatherhood, legacy, and remembrance.  

Drawing from archival family photographs, Gibbs emphasizes placement, size, and proportion, blending intimate mark-making with bold painterly gestures. By complicating and subverting visual stereotypes, Gibbs engages deeply with the materiality of painting, offering tender, emotionally evocative portrayals of Black men as husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons. These allegorical and autobiographical works underscore quiet moments of joy, sorrow, and beauty as vital components of Black life. Additionally, commissioned portraits of such figures as Elijah Cummings and August Wilson are juxtaposed with allegorical figures from Gibbs’s dreams, reflecting his growth as an artist and individual. Gibbs’s work offers a fresh approach to painting the human form, following in the footsteps of other Black figurative painters Kerry James Marshall, Henry Taylor, and Amy Sherald.