In 2021, I started a series of paintings celebrating Black women with incredible migration and pioneer stories. These works honored many Californians, like Biddy Mason, an African American pioneer in Los Angeles, Maria Quinteros Valdez, the first Afro-Latina resident of Beverly Hills, and Henrietta VanHorn-DeBose of La Jolla, CA.

After finishing this series, I wanted to focus on my own family’s migrations over the last three generations. I began with my maternal grandfather, Herman Daniels, who was born in Barbados in the West Indies. His story is my favorite, and though he passed away decades ago, I still feel a close connection to him. As a young man, he moved to Cuba to learn the trade of barrel making, becoming a cooper. It was thrilling to hear him speak Spanish when he came to live with us in California, when I was a very young child, having moved from New York.

He told us that after a few years in Cuba, he stowed away on a ship bound for New York. Once there, he sent for his sweetheart, my grandmother, Ada, who was still in Barbados. They moved to the Bronx, started a family, and had my mother, Gilda, and her older brother, Bert.