Michael Ray Charles

Michael Ray Charles is a designer and illustrator.  He later moved to using paints, which is now his preferred medium.  Charles’s works are graphically styled, as if they were an old poster or advertisement from product packages, billboards, radio jingles, and television commercials.  Charles draws comparison between Sambo, Mammy, and minstrel images of an earlier era and contemporary mass-media portrayals of black youths, celebrities or both colors, and athletes.  The images he chooses to use are seen constantly when someone think of the old black south, such as with Sambo and Mammy.

Charles chooses to use these images because he can.  He is an African American man, and who better to use these images than himself?  These painting receive different views when they are done either by a white man or black man, and Charles shows that in his works.  He uses images of Sambo and Mammy in his work because they are embedded in the views of people when they think about the black, slave man of the south.  Most people see the Sambo image when they think of the south, the big lips, bright white teeth, and smiling like crazy.  Charles uses these images and stereotypes to his advantage in his work by portraying them in a way that people have to look at them; they can’t look away and forget about it.  “Stereotypes have evolved,” he notes. “I’m trying to deal with present and past stereotypes in the context of today’s society.” 

Michael Ray Charles work is different from most people seeing as the content it deals with and the context in which it is displayed is something other artists don’t do.  In each of his paintings, notions of beauty, ugliness, and violence emerge and converge, reminding us we cannot forget about a past that has led us to where and who we are today.  Michael Ray Charles work helps us remember this.       

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