Regularly, I engage in a personal review of my paradigms on Art, Design and Photography. Yes, while I have goals that go beyond just Art, Design and Photography, I am still greatly concerned with how I perceive those concepts. I’m concerned with how I have and am perceiving things within life as they influence what I consider and prioritize the ingredients and elements that make profound Art and Design and Photography. Because I want to stay as consistent as possible with my often varying perspectives, it is important to know and understand how and why they apply to me being an Artist and Creator.

Encouraged and inspired by the likes of Jean-Michel Basquiat, my approach to Art has always been honest and true to those things that influenced me the most out of my childhood, that of sci-fi and/or fantasy. Pen and paper line art was always my thing but as I’ve grown and gotten older, it think of Art within the manual and handmade with a new inclusion of those electronic resources. It’s much more a convenient advent to have programs such as Procreate and Sketchbook and some others. Whether it’s handmade or done digitally, the most important is to take what remains in the imagination and bring it to realization and life.

Design—while an aspect of Art—is much about the organization of (artistic) elements to communicate. Whether it be to communicate a thought, idea or feeling, what’s important is to stay true to ones ideas of communication and the design aesthetic needed to communicate effectively.

Photography is the most—THE MOST—important and substantial to me right now. Because I spent so much of my life aspiring to engaging photography in those ways done by Gordon Parks and others that just have made an impact, Photography takes a position and role that just can’t be fully defined nor compared. Preluding the interest, passion and aspiration for filmmaking and visual storytelling, photography has gripped me with tremendous force and firmness. Within photography, I aspire—in personal projects and levels—I just want to capture the things about life that have always impacted me. It’s not just life but the ideas of “Black” life that—to me—are iconic and so representative of everything I love.

The dichotomy and duality that is me is and has been informed by a variety of elements. Yes, as it all might seem complex and contradictory there is a lightness and an equal darkness that resides within. As I love, I also lust. While I respect order, I understand chaos. Where one side or perspective desires to engage automotive design and performance, another lusts to fully engage what I love so much about women. Everything that is male and African American and classy and hood and everything else orbiting have made me this man that I am. Complex and even borderline destructive while seemingly having found a newness and revival of what has been at my spiritual core—I approach it all with as much of the uniqueness and individuality that is me, Liam Ian Black and William Burrell Philpot IV.

*As I further engage and grow into who I am as Liam Ian Black, I’m still learning and relearning. I’m still developing and redeveloping adding certain things while dropping others. At the end of it all, I only want to have explored the most—the MOST—of who I am and who I can be as to expand beyond the confines of who I have been within this physical form named William Burrell Philpot IV.

I was raised out of dysfunction that only a certain few would or could understand. Where hip-hop and women and their objectification gave clarity and identity to my manhood, I’ve been informed by what most might say is inappropriate and and corrupting of the character…but I stand confident on the facts that have cultivate this “civilized” world.

Where I was born into deceit and lies and the products of mischievous and/or negatively inspired deeds, I had to find my own truth. I had to transition to become something that I could’ve never been just as William B. Philpot IV. As Liam Ian Black, I am fathered and nurtured and taken care of by that which is greater than any man. As I’ve only been abandoned or moderately taken care of by man, that Higher Power stepped in to take care of me. The most of what I could ever ever do within this life is to create, manifest and give as I have been blessed with and to do. I am order and I am chaos—functional dysfunction. I am dysfunctional function. Because I exist, I am a contributor to the whole…and so… I ask not to be forgiven for whatever I might do…but more understood to be no different and yet different from everything that this world has come to hate and love about being a Man of Color, Ethnicity and Culture. A Man…of this modern time.

In 2024, I’ll be continuing to engage the most of what I am and who I can become before my time is over. I’ll be exploring the Dichotomy and Duality of me. I know that this world cares little for what is pure, light and true…and yet will marvel over those things shiny and new and innovative…seeing value in that which adds value based upon the measurements of society. Therefore…

LIAM IAN

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MY CONCEPTS AND IDEAS ON ART, DESIGN AND PHOTOGRAPHY - 2023