Good Hart Artist Residency

Her works primarily consist of paintings that utilize bold colors, textures, and compositions to emphasize the liberating nature of childhood expression and share the stories of her inner child along with ancestral memories passed down through generations.

Sasha-Loriene is a 2023 grant recipient of the Maryland State Council of the Arts and the Baltimore Office of Promotion and The Arts. She has participated in artist residencies in Maryland and exhibited in Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia, New York, Florida, and the United Kingdom.

As the founder of Mahyue Studios, a community arts incubator centering healing, storytelling, and cultural exchange, and Black Girls Who Paint, a global movement supporting Black women and girl artists, Sasha-Loriene leverages her BA in Economics from University of Maryland: College Park and MPA in Public Management from American University to amplify her artistic voice and social-engagement on larger scales.

Artist Statement

My understanding of home beyond infrastructure deeply influences my art direction. As such, I center ‘play’ and ‘discovery’ to reconnect with my inner child, document my healing journey, and explore the potential of inner-child healing as a means to dismantle and reconstruct core beliefs that shape our existence.
Currently, my practice explores what it means to cultivate home within myself through two overarching questions: (1) How have my childhood experiences left long-lasting impressions in adulthood and (2) How am I meeting the needs of my inner child today? To find these answers, I utilize art forms enjoyed during youth, such as painting, collage and crochet, to reconnect with parts of myself that I disconnected from during adolescence into early adulthood.I engage various materials such as, acrylic and oil paints, pastels, found objects, thread/string, repurposed canvas, and paper to mirror the inquisitive nature of children and offer an intimate exploration into childhood memories and their enduring impact on adult life. I deconstruct childhood wounds through an intuitive approach to portraiture, figuration, and abstraction to evoke nostalgia and invite the audience to appreciate the small moments of joy in everyday life. This is how I contextualize the world around me, express gratitude for lived experiences as a whole, and honor individual evolution by understanding the wants, needs, and desires of my inner child. As I heal and empower my inner child to run free within my hopes, dreams, and offerings, I invite others to engage with their inner child and journey alongside me towards healing. In doing so, we contribute to collective healing and spark a communal reimagination of the world, leading to a more empathetic worldview and positive influence on future generations.

During the Good Hart Artist Residency, I will use this dedicated time and space to work on a series of collages on paper for the Good For Soul Collection, an ongoing body of work that documents the reconnection with one’s inner child through artmaking and play to explore the potential of inner-child healing as a means to dismantle and reconstruct the core beliefs that shape our existence. Each collage will act as its own narrative, where the cutting, rearranging, and piecing together of diverse materials serves as a metaphor for examining and reassembling the unseen structures that govern our lives. This process of playful creation and storytelling is at the heart of this collection and my artist practice to invite participants to engage with their inner child, sparking a communal reimagining of societal boundaries and fostering a more inclusive, empathetic worldview. I will also host a Community Gathering, a 2-hour workshop centered on inner-child healing through collage and storytelling that provides an immersive experience encouraging participants to reflect on their personal journeys and understand how individual healing and the reconnection to one’s playful inquisitive self can lead to collective empowerment and societal transformation.
Post-residency, I will recreate the collage I made onto medium to large-scale canvas using a range of materials – gifted mementos, found items, nostalgic photographs, acrylic paint, pastels, and string – to conceive of what implications arise from reconnecting with one’s inner child in adulthood and how collective healing can help dismantle social contracts and core beliefs in a rapidly changing landscape.

Community Engagement

< 2024 Residents