2026-2027 Grant Transparency: Layers Between Light & Shadow

Grant 2015, 2023-2024, 2025-2026

Scholarship 2016-2017, 2017-2018, 2018-2019, 2019-2020

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YAYA Artist

Paul Michael Wright is exploring identity, transparency, and transformation through figurative work and layered materials. The human figure serves as a vehicle to examine personal and collective narratives of coming of age, memory, and emotional duality. Wright works across painting, illustration, and mixed media, recently incorporating alcohol ink and transparent surfaces to create luminous compositions that engage light, color, and perception. “Using light, color, and translucency, I build images that shift between clarity and obscurity. Figures emerge, dissolve, and reconfigure across the surface, creating a tension between visibility and fragmentation. These layered compositions reflect the instability of memory and the complexity of self-representation—where the subject is never fixed, but continuously unfolding,” he explains.

This grant supports Wright in his goal of building a large-scale installation titled Transparency: Layers Between Light & Shadow, which will open at YAYA in 2027. He plans to install both large-scale and small-scale artworks - wall-mounted pieces, freestanding structures, and suspended forms - to create an immersive environment that activates shifting relationships between light, color, and space. “Through workshops at the Children's Art Carnival (CAC) and sustained studio experimentation, I reconnected with play, risk, and material exploration,” explains Wright. “This shift led me to more deeply examine transparency and duality as structural principles within my work. Alcohol ink has become central to this evolution, offering spontaneity, fluidity, and risk while allowing me to prioritize emotional and conceptual resonance over rigid control or excessive detail. The integration of oil-based transparent glazes further extends this language, enabling layered surfaces that balance experimentation with craft.”

Building this exhibition marks a significant transition from studio-based experimentation to a public-facing exhibition that will spark public engagement and build the professional infrastructure necessary for sustained artistic growth. Wright plans to host workshops that will invite participants to engage directly with ink, layering processes, and intuitive image-making, focusing on experimentation, material play, and transparency. “The goal is to make aspects of my studio process accessible while encouraging participants to explore risk, imperfection, and discovery in their own creative practice,” he explains. Grant funds will be used to purchase materials, build installation infrastructure, and frame and insure artworks. As Wright sums it up, “Ultimately, Transparency: Layers Between Light & Shadow is about transformation—of material, image, and perception. It reflects my ongoing commitment to exploring how meaning is constructed through layers, and how viewers experience work not as fixed objects but as shifting encounters.”

Wright is currently a teaching artist in New York City, making arts education accessible to young artists and focusing his curriculum on portfolio building, material exploration, and professional development. He graduated from New Orleans Center for Creative Arts in 2012, received his B.F.A. from Parsons, The New School for Design in 2019, and earned his M.F.A. in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts in 2021. In New Orleans, he has exhibited at the Contemporary Arts Center, George Rodrigue Gallery, the African American Museum and 5 Press Gallery. His work was shown at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC in 2009. He has been an artist-in-residence at Adobe, Cow House Studios in Wexford, Ireland, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation in New Orleans. He now works as a freelance muralist, collaborating and completing four major projects in the last year with companies such as Vidmob, Spotify Resorts World Casino, Lionsgate and Nola Station. He has given back to the community that raised him by serving as a mentor, teaching artist, and studio assistant at YAYA.

Paul Michael Wright first joined the YAYA Guild in 2007.