We recently connected with M. Lorin and have shared our conversation below.

M., thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

I completed a series last year that broke the ice of a years-long painter’s block. Titled “Self-Care Fae” the five-part series celebrates Black women as magical creatures, enjoying daily acts of wellness. The images invoke figures of lore (like angels, fairies and elves!) as avatars for the expression of self-love and gratitude. Like the 90s cartoons, “Magical Girl” anime and Lisa Frank stationery I grew up with, this body of work is imbued with whimsy, quirks and joy – the kind that makes my inner child smile. Through intentional practices of personal growth, I’m proud to return to my practice with an authentic, renewed, and rooted sense of purpose: to tell visual stories that center, reflect and empower my experience (and so many others) as a Black woman in today’s world.

I am also a screenwriter and filmmaker! Last September, I finally released a labor of love – the pilot for my planned fantasy anthology series, “Chickweed Magik”. “Wannabe”, the first episode, tells the story of four young Black cheerleaders whose conflicting anxieties about their approaching adulthood surface when they lose their way in the woods and meet a mysterious girl, guarding a fountain she claims is supernatural. This project taught so many lessons that truly re-invigorated my relationship to the craft and community of filmmaking. This year, I’m dedicated to continuing this journey – and many more!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m a multidisciplinary storyteller, primarily as a writer, painter and filmmaker. My art is a practice of magic and therapy. My narrative focus invokes urban fantasy as allegorical expressions of Black womanhood in contemporary American society.

As a kid, I would write fantasy stories in notebooks and on my computer. I was taught myself how to draw so that I could illustrate the characters in these many, wild tales. Alongside those creative outlets, my passion for cinema grew – by the end of 7th grade, I declared in an essay that I would pursue all of these art forms for the rest of my life.

I began my painting career as a paid intern during high-school at Gallery 37, in a skateboard design program. There, I was also introduced to filmmaking, writing and directing my first short film. I continued pursuing this multi-practice journey into the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where I eventually received my BFA in 2015.

After college, I focused on my professional career in arts spaces; the many stresses of adulting veering me away from my creative dreams. However, during those years I continued to work on (and work through) what I could, with life experiences informing the mission for my work. Much of my adulthood has been confronting the negative impacts of anti-Blackness and misogyny in our global society. Today, I dedicate and invoke my work and creative practice as a service and ode to the many women who are erased from or devalued and marginalized within the canon of literature, paintings, and cinema.

The style of my work is evolving and shapeshifting. Abstracted brown bodies within splashes, shapes and fields of multicolor are core elements I’m most moved by when experiencing by eye as well as creating in my process. While I enjoy and often make work that has a lightness and accessibly attractive quality to them, as inspired by the familiar aesthetics of American and Japanese animation, I’m most interested in combining aspects of these mainstream drawing styles with my mission as an artist. This approach is most concentrated in how I render my figures, my choices founded in refracting or redefining what physical features are valued as a visual avatar for story. My commitment to avoiding the trappings of desirability politics and making “pretty” art in favor of honest, more deserving images brings an integrity to my work that I do believe sets me apart from many other artists who portray the woman form.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

There are many aspects of our society that should but likely will not change – at least in our lifetimes. What we can all do is our part. As an emerging Black woman artist whose work depicts Black women, I often run into struggles with receiving support from local art buyers in the Chicago community, despite having had the opportunity to showcase my work in a variety of well-regarded spaces.

My call-to-action to anyone reading who claims to believe in the importance of representation in media: put your money where your mouth is! Go to art shows with a small budget and the intention to purchase work from an artist who isn’t like you. Spend money on writers whose work incorporates elements of a culture that isn’t yours – and actually read it. Buy a work of art depicting a person who isn’t of your ethnic background – then proudly hang it on your wall. Support an array of local artists, not just those already popular and backed by multimillion dollar companies. Do this consistently and sincerely, not as a way to occasionally feel good about yourself but because you truly know it makes this crazy world better.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

I saw an interview with filmmaker Barry Jenkins (director of “Moonlight” and “If Beale Street Could Talk”) where he discussed the invention of the camera and how it was not originally designed to effectively capture melanated skin. The insightful details he shared about the history of discrimination in color photography contributed to the awakening of my mission as an artist. Core elements baked in the foundation of cinema are exclusion, revisionist history and xenophobic propaganda, Many traditional processes of movie-making uphold unsustainable and often toxic practices that were borrowed from other unethical functions of capitalist society. Painting, too, became an elitist art form for centuries, centered in serving those of wealth and high status. In many ways, not much has changed for either art form. The interview with Barry Jenkins fine tuned my awareness that many of the tools and methods I use as an artist were, at least in part, designed to be weapons of oppression. Because of this, I’m both more vested in learning aspects of the original functions of these tools and methods in ways that I previously wasn’t, so that I can be more intentional in the choices I make – and the rules I break – as a storyteller.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: imagemaker_lorin

Image Credits
In order of upload: “Meditation Fae” (acrylic on canvas) “Brkthru” (acrylic on canvas mounted wood) “Nighty Night Fae” (acrylic on canvas) Film stills from pilot “Wannabe” of in-development anthology series “Chickweed Magik”