Growing up in the Bay Area, I was surrounded by a culture that taught me how beauty and struggle can exist in the same place. My work lives in that intersection, exploring Black youth, innocence, and the environments that shape us before the world tells us who we are supposed to become.

I use nostalgia as a way back. Childhood memories, neighborhood rituals, music, fashion, family, and the small moments that once felt ordinary become symbols of something worth protecting. These familiar scenes allow me to explore Black culture through a lens that feels personal, but also deeply familiar to those who grew up in similar spaces.

There is often tension beneath the joy in my work. The world surrounding these children may not always be gentle, but I choose not to make struggle the center of their story. Instead, I focus on imagination, freedom, play, and possibility.

My work is ultimately about protecting that innocence. It is about remembering who we were before circumstance hardened us, and honoring the joy that existed even when life was complicated. For me, choosing to paint Black joy is not ignoring reality. It is insisting that joy was part of the reality too.

De’Vonne Foxworth is a Bay Area based multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans tattooing, painting, and visual storytelling. Beginning his professional career as a tattoo artist in 2012, Foxworth spent more than a decade developing a distinct approach to Black and grey realism, composition, light, and narrative imagery before expanding his practice into fine art.

Foxworth also studied at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, where he took formal art courses to further develop his foundation. Although he did not complete his degree, he continued independently building his education through practice, discipline, and real-world experience, steadily progressing his career as a working artist.

His upbringing in the Bay Area deeply informs his perspective. Born to a mother who had him at 17, Foxworth grew up understanding responsibility at an early age and has played an active role in helping raise his younger brothers. These lived experiences shaped both his work ethic and his commitment to family, community, and storytelling through art.

His tattoo career has earned recognition nationally and internationally. Foxworth competed on Ink Master Season 11 and has received multiple awards throughout the United States, as well as international recognition for his work in Rome. His clientele has included professional athletes across the NFL and NBA, Olympians, and other notable figures. He is also the co-founder of Sixteenth Studio in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he has continued to build a practice centered on technical excellence, representation, and artistic community.

His visual language has also expanded beyond tattooing through large-scale creative and commercial projects. After more than a decade of creating artwork directly on the body, Foxworth began translating the skills developed through tattooing into painting: dramatic light, controlled value, realism, storytelling, and an understanding of how a single image can carry an entire narrative.

His fine art practice now turns inward, drawing heavily from his upbringing in the Bay Area and memories of childhood. Through scenes of play, family, neighborhood life, fashion, music, and early-2000s culture, Foxworth explores the intersection of Blackness, youth, nostalgia, and innocence. Rather than allowing hardship to become the defining image of the Black experience, he deliberately centers joy, imagination, tenderness, and possibility.

For Foxworth, the transition into fine art is not a departure from his previous work, but an evolution of it. The discipline and storytelling developed over fourteen years of tattooing now serve a larger personal exploration: preserving the memories that shaped him and creating images that protect the innocence of Black youth while honoring the culture that raised them.