About:Colorful Voices: Taylor Gordon, Alim Smith, Manuel Ramos brings together three distinctive practices that articulate the richness of contemporary community life through color, portraiture, and cultural reference. The exhibition seeks to foreground the vitality of local voices while offering a space in which viewers might consider how identity, humor, and heritage are translated into visual form.
Taylor Gordon’s paintings situate themselves within the lineage of Black contemporary art, yet remain deeply personal. Her chromatic sensibility infuses each figure with layered emotional resonance, encouraging conversations around beauty, resilience, and the multiplicity of Black experience beyond reductive narratives. Manuel Ramos, or “RAmos ART,” approaches portraiture with a keen attentiveness to light and surface, imbuing his sitters with an understated dignity that resonates quietly yet powerfully. Emerging from a self-taught practice shaped during the pandemic, his canvases record moments of presence that hover between the intimate and universal. Alim Smith, or “Yesterday Nite,” works in a spontaneous visual language, fusing surrealism, popular culture, and sly humor. His rhythmic compositions and vivid palette translate music, memory, and cultural archetypes into forms at once playful and incisive.
Together these artists propose color as more than visual pleasure: it becomes a conduit for empathy, critique, and joy. Colorful Voices invites us to engage with works that are celebratory yet searching, attuned to both the textures of daily life and the broader currents shaping our communities. In gathering their practices, the exhibition hopes to affirm art’s capacity to nurture dialogue and to render visible the stories that animate shared experience.
Alim Smith also known as “Yesterday Nite” is an interdisciplinary artist whose work has been exhibited in American art galleries. He creates original, surrealistic cultural artifacts to shift and challenge your current perspective. His artistic process expands beyond a singular medium due to several years of applied studies in Visual Art, Communicative Arts, and Photography. Smith’s creative exploration stems from experiences and events within his culture, applying a variety of ideas based on his knowledge of self and understanding of others. It is the rhythm and life of his subjects, the dark humor embedded within each brushstroke, the rich cultural inspiration and the bold, often sensual nature of his work that distinguish Yesterday Nite. Smith says he is devoted to creating art that is heavily inspired by entertainment (primarily music and comedy), women, and black culture.
Taylor Gordon, also known as TaytheCreator, is a Long Island native and graduate student at the University of Delaware, where she is pursuing a Master of Fine Art (MFA) degree while teaching an introductory painting class. In addition to her academic and teaching commitments, Taylor is a small business owner commissioned to create portraits displayed in company offices and educational institutions. She is also a featured participant in various art shows and exhibitions.
Inspired by Black contemporary art, Taylor’s work utilizes colors to tell a story and exhibit expressions, thus allowing viewers to reflect and interpret what they see on the canvas. She sees herself as a creator versus an artist with a specific artistic discipline, due to her versatilityv in many artistic styles. While she exclusively uses oil paints for portraits, her work also incorporates digital, sound, and mixed media. She continues to take her artwork to the next level while expanding her repertoire of art media, which includes flyers, book illustrations and so much more.
RAmos ART (Manuel Ivan Ramos)
Art is my way of capturing the essence of humanity—its depth, emotions, and untold stories. Specializing in oil portraits, I explore the subtle interplay of light, color, and texture to bring my subjects to life, revealing their unique presence and inner world. While oil remains my primary medium, my artistic journey has led me to experiment with various techniques and materials, allowing me to push creative boundaries and evolve as an artist.
Each piece I create is a dialogue between the subject and the viewer, a moment frozen in time that invites introspection and connection. My work is inspired by the richness of human expression and the power of art to evoke emotion, challenge perception, and preserve the fleeting beauty of existence.
Through my paintings, I strive to honor the individuality of each person I depict while leaving space for interpretation, inviting the audience to see beyond the surface and engage with the deeper narrative within each portrait.
“GOD IS MY FAVORITE DESIGNER.” - Manuel Ramos
