"Mic Drop" 24×36" mixed media and oil on canvas

This portrait honors Sheila Radford-Hill — author, activist and academic — rendered in a signature style where collage builds the energy, shape, and vibrancy of the composition, with oil paint layered on top to add depth and movement.

Sheila is depicted mid-speech, holding a microphone close, her gaze direct and unflinching. Her face is built from richly varied collage papers layered and torn to sculpt the planes of her features with remarkable dimensionality. The microphone head is constructed from a patchwork of black and white patterned papers, finished with touches of pearlescent paint to catch the light. Her earrings receive the same treatment — tiny collaged gems that reward a closer look.

The background is dense with text: Sheila's own written reflection--an excerpt from her book in progress on Black Women's Aging in a Spiteful America--is painted in bronze iridescent paint that shifts and glimmers at different angles against the deep, dark ground. The words run edge to edge without hyphens — a stream of consciousness — and certain phrases deliberately migrate onto the figure itself. The final words cascade down onto her collar: "…to be recognized and respected for who we are and what we contribute."  A cool transparent glaze over the background brings out the golden warmth of the bronze lettering and distinguishes the words that stayed in the background from those that claimed center stage.

Her jacket is collaged from paper bearing a dove-grey sky filled with birds in flight — their movement echoing the energy of the figure above — while a bold yellow-gold garment beneath anchors the composition with warmth against the cool jacket and dark, text-filled ground.

"Mic Drop" is part of the artist's Portraits of Liberation, Transformation, and Imagination series — an ongoing body of work that turns its lens on members of her community as they navigate, resist, and reimagine this particular moment in American history.