KOJO GRIFFIN Born in Virginia, grew up outside of Boston, ...

RIFFIN Born in Virginia, grew up outside of Boston, lives in Atlanta with his wife and two kids. Internationally recognized; very humble over the phone. Plays with time; creates a narrative that allows movement in the imagination of the viewer. Painter.

What are your artistic tools? My interest in people and society, the structures that permeate our existence. A fascination with human behavior and psychology. I deal with things that we don't always like to talk or think about. When people are in situations that are questionable, we feel awkward or nervous. Those awkward moments are hard to deal with, but in retrospect you can laugh at the worst shit, right?

How much of art is a craft that can be learned, or passed on, and how much comes from within? I've always ascribed to the idea that the perfect thing is to have both of those, to develop your intuitiveness and to also develop your craftsmanship. I feel there is a necessity for both the synthetic, the ability to create things out of nothing, as well as the analytic, the ability to break things down and understand their parts in a precise way.

Describe your relationship with art. I won't say art is all I'm good at, but it's the only thing I'm exceptionally good at. For me, the thrill is in the creative process, making it, seeing the finished product. But it's also the thrill of seeing people interacting with the work. It's personal and it's really close to me, but the point is to share it with people.

Is each of your works alive on its own, or are they pieces to a larger puzzle that is you, and your body of work? Hopefully they're all strong enough to stand on their own, but for me, it's more like creating a visual language that represents the ideas. I create these elements of the language or the signifiers, and I can combine them in different ways to just talk about a variety of different things.

If this world were to shift… I don't believe that the world would ever go through an elevation like that; I feel this plane of existence is meant to have flaws, because that's part of the way we learn for whatever the next level is. That's part of the lesson—shit is fucked up on purpose by the greater scheme of things… And that's why I do what I do, to communicate with people. Also, that's why I illustrate a lot of those fucked up things [that can happen]. That's why the characters are meant to be ambiguous and not have nationalities or racial characteristics to them because, the point being, that fucked up shit just happens everywhere in the world and to everybody.