Who is AFR?

My friends call me Andy. AFR are the initials for Andrew F. Romeo, my multisyllabic name, with eleven letters in the middle name alone.  I have loved art since the age of 4. Born in Guyana, South America, I have lived in the US for more than half of my life. I consider myself a cultural artist. My work, mostly in digital media, reflects things I have found interesting, joyful, curious, and sometimes jarring, over the decades of my hyphenated cultural life.  

As a child, I struggled with speech, apparently after my mother's untimely death when I was 4. I remember how much my stutter frustrated me. It seemed like my brain, and images I saw, did not match, or keep pace with the words I could say. A few years of speech, music and art therapy opened up a world of unspoken expression. Colors seemed brighter, sound had an unexplainable attraction, and shape presented me with endless surprises. 

I kept a notebook of sketches I would draw and write in. Tattered and stained, many years later, it is a diary of what I felt, saw, and hoped for.

These collections are similar to my earliest journal, and evoke the same curiosity I had when I first learned how to evoke color, light, and shadow in simple strokes.

Combined in groups or in individual pieces, they tell stories that represent my sensibilities and views of the world in the moment. I hope you can enjoy and relate to them. 

I donate a percentage of AFRArt2U Sales to organizations doing work I care about, and that impact the lives of loved ones.  Iris House Harlem, is a support center for underserved women affected by HIV, and families, and, One SCD Voice, an organization that connects, educates and empowers the Sickle Cell care community.

 

Andy Romeo