ARMANDO ALLEYNE

^{(b. 1959, New York, NY; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)}

Armando Alleyne’s painted and collaged renditions of jazz musicians, Afro-Latin singers, boxers, as well as family members and friends, have a rhythm all their own. Within his practice of painting portraits of Black icons, he allows elements of his lived experience to take form in his work. Never shying away from the seminal, the sensual, or the political, Alleyne’s paintings tell a story of how we are subject to our city and how, in it, we can search for the tools to heal. Alleyne grew up in Lower Manhattan and graduated from The City College of New York with a BA in Education and Fine Arts in 1983.

Children’s Art Carnival affiliation: Teaching Artist Intern, mid-to-late 1970s for one or two semesters

Thelonious Monk, 2000

Acrylic on rag paper
30 × 22 in.
Courtesy of the artist

In his late teens, Armando Alleyne had an internship at the Carnival, where he worked alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat in Michael A. Cummings’s classroom. The latter became a longtime mentor to him. Alongside those relationships, Alleyne’s musical palette broadened when he was exposed to jazz and blues at the Carnival. In the classroom, he witnessed how students were instructed to listen to recording artists such as Billie Holiday, Mary Lou Williams, and Muddy Waters and use their music as inspiration for their artwork.

It was not until the early 1980s, after leaving the Carnival and experiencing a vivid dream featuring jazz musicians, that Alleyne realized how deeply that exposure to jazz had seeped into his subconscious. “I didn't see the footprint of [the] Children's Art Carnival until later…I felt like wow, this jazz music is really inspiring. I really need to take this more seriously…” he said. “That started me on the road of…creating jazz musicians as a major theme in my artwork...”