Brief Artist Bio

of

The Artist Known as “Black Light”

Lennell Maurice Martin

Instagram @ blacklightartistry

2023

“I’ve been teaching myself how to draw and paint in all the mediums. As an artist, it is important for me to be able to bring my ideas to life with virtually anything I can make a mark with. Art taught me that magic is real - human beings have the awesome power to create something where nothing existed: whether it is a whole other world, or objects and experiences in this world. It is mind blowing to know that on a flat surface in this world you can create another multi-dimensional (3D & 4D) world.

Writing may be the most powerful art form I practice - when I write I have the power to paint pictures in the minds of others, even the blind, without using any paint. If that is not magic, I don’t know what is.” L. Maurice Martin, December 19, 2018

Born in Boston, MA as Lennell Maurice Martin to a Cape Verdean mother and a Black American father, I spent the first seven years of my life swimming in the influences of the city’s urban ghetto scenes in the early eighties. The artistic expression of Hip-Hop made a profound impression on my senses and personal experiences before moving to Minneapolis, MN.

I recall the very first connection I felt with art. I loved riding the subway trains through Boston because I would just look out the window and see art everywhere. Graffiti would be on buildings, bridges, buses, trains, trollies and throughout the subway system. I loved hearing the music and watching the “B-Boys” breakdancing in the subways, parks, street corners and Projects. If by chance I happened to catch a free-style rap battle taking place between two MC’s while another was “beat boxing,” then I was having the time of my life.

During this period of time, color TVs, cartoon animations, Marvel Comics, arcades (video games), and MTV music videos began to emerge as huge cultural influences. They inspired me to want to create my own images like the ones I’d seen in the form of graffiti, comics, movies, and television.

At the age of eight (1985), I became a permanent resident of North Minneapolis. Living in the poorest, most violent, and run down parts of the ghetto, from Boston to Minneapolis, created the perfect conditions for a little boy to become one more of the many troubled youth in America. I soon found myself taking heed to the survival tactics and wisdom of the streets.

Fueled by pain, horror, and desperation to escape the prison of poverty and ignorance, I developed a strong ambition and drive to generate wealth and be successful. However, once I became aware of the fact that a large part of my social and economic quality of life was directly related to oppression and ongoing discrimination, I had a desire to break down negative stereotypes and myths about black people in America.

In 1995 it would become apparent the impressions that the various forms of street art made on my heart as a young boy riding the subway train through Boston never died. The mounting pressures of trying to graduate from high school, buy my own food and clothes, pay my rent, utility bills, phone bills, car insurance, gas, working a part-time job after school plus I had a daughter on the way - all this combined with the high expectations I had for myself at the time really started to forge and refine the ideas in my mind.

The ideas that had the most power over my pain, passions, and desires were: 1) overcome poverty, 2) bring enlightenment to the ghetto experience, 3) express myself through art and music. Under all the pressure, a fusion of these three thoughts resulted in one all-encompassing vision and plan to go to school for Computer Graphics and 3D animation and learn to produce music videos, films and video games.

This was at a time when PlayStation and Nintendo were taking us by storm. I was so amazed by the capabilities and possibilities of graphics, that I would just study the screens and boards or realms, thinking if I could figure out how to make computer images, I could make a lot of money. Bur first I had to learn how to draw, so I made my first attempt at vocational training for Computer Graphics and 3D animation. I was accepted to the School of Communication Arts. Then, three weeks later, I was shot. I could not walk for a year and suffered from severe nerve damage so I was forced to drop my classes.

By the year 2000, I was back in the game and on my grind. I enrolled at Brown Institute for their Visual Communications Program. Of course this was not without great adversity. While on my way to becoming a great visual artist and graphic designer, half-way through my training, I found myself homeless, staying here an there, often at my Mother’s or Aunt’s house. Eventually I ended up having to take some time off to get myself together. A few months later I was back and made it to my last semester. Then the worst set-back of all happened when I was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

In the cumulative year and a half of schooling in the Visual Communications Program at Brown, I was introduced to the fine arts as part of my training. I had no idea those seeds planted in me would take root and blossom while in prison.

My goal has been to master realistic drawing and painting in any medium and bring myself to a point where I can free-style from my imagination without visual references, and choose when and how to transition from representational art to abstract art. The ability to express visual thoughts and observations at will, with virtually any choice of stylus, is to me the mark of an ultimate artistic genius. That is what I most loved about graffiti artists, illustrators, and street artists. I marvel at the realistic fantasy artist. In my opinion, they are among the most talented visual artists. Although not everyone can do fantasy art at a high level, my goal is to be among those artists one day. Everything I breathe life into from my style, swag and speech, spoken word, poems and songs, journals, stories, essays, concepts, designs and drafts, sketches, drawings and paintings, are a living expression of Black American Soul, R&B, Jazz, Blues and Hip-Hop culture.  Therefore if I choose to paint a series of landscapes or wildlife paintings, then the mere fact that those paintings were filtered through my eyes, and interpreted by my hand, make them urban, street and Hip-Hop in essence.