There are stories behind what artist Destiny Palmer creates. She researches, she writes down thoughts, and she creates art, rich in color and deep in meaning. 

She talked about her work earlier this week while taking a break from setting up her exhibit, “Spoken In a Language You Can’t Ignore,” in the Sue and Eugene Mercy Jr. Gallery. The exhibit opens on Thursday, November 14, in conjunction with the College-Level Art Seminar autumn exhibition in the Barnes and Wilde galleries. An opening reception will take place at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, and both shows will run through January 24, 2025.  

On one wall of the Mercy Gallery, in bright yellow, are the words, “They picked cotton so I could paint on it.” To the right of that sentence are many other thoughts of Ms. Palmer’s written in pencil:  

I can't be an artist ... I can’t be a human without acknowledging what has come before me. 

They plowed a way for me. They plowed this space for me. 

Cotton is in everything we use today. 

Ms. Palmer will read and write as part of the creative process, a way of understanding what she is creating.  

Her ancestors are from South Carolina, she said, and her grandmother would have been among those relatives to have picked cotton. “There is something really interesting about being a painter and going through fine art academia,” Ms. Palmer said. “It’s really important to think about the materials you choose to paint on, but we don’t talk about it very much. So I’m painting on cotton duck. It’s my favorite material. But there is something I have to reconcile with about this material that I paint on and the privilege to do so, knowing my family’s relationship to it and the privilege I get to have as an artist now.” 

Color plays a huge role in Ms. Palmer’s work. Her artist statement says that “there are about 59 recorded color systems, a majority of which are scientifically based. I am captivated by exploring the possibility of a color system that centers history instead.” 

She has produced large-scale works that focus on various colors, and she has done much research on color, she said. Her fuchsia series came from learning more about the fuchsia plant, that common plant you might see in hanging baskets. “I was really interested in using a color that could maybe describe rage or intention rather than the color red that we might expect to use, and that was a response to color history and back feminism histories and everything in between.”  

Her black-and-blue series, she said, came at a time when “a lot of folks were investigating equity in the healthcare field. ... I came across an article around people researching what a bruise looks like on a black body rather than white skin or fair skin. What was interesting to me is I know what a bruise on my body looks like, and down that rabbit hole I uncovered other artists trying to think through the use of black and blue as a symbol, as a tool, as well as all of the other things that can be associated with it.” 

All of this was happening as the pandemic struck and George Floyd was killed. Mr. Floyd was a black man who was murdered on May 25, 2020, by a white police officer in Minnesota, setting off protests around the country. These events led to Ms. Palmer’s black-and-blue installation, which she is showing at Loomis to focus specifically on Emmit Till, who was 14 in 1955 when he was brutally killed by white men in Mississippi — a murder that helped galvanize the civil rights movement. 

Ms. Palmer also has painted large murals in public spaces.  

“One of the interesting things about making public art is I have been able to interact with a lot of communities — different types of communities — and essentially be, maybe, a maker of what they are thinking,” she said. “For me, public art is a way to reclaim a space or reclaim communities for folks, and I'm really grateful to be able to be that go-between.” 

Ms. Palmer says she hopes her work “sparks a curiosity” in the students who view her exhibit. 

“I hope that for some it may be satisfying to witness some of the work,” Ms. Palmer said. “I hope there are emotions that are translated through the work. I hope it encourages them to dig a little deeper into the histories we are given, and I hope it sparks conversation.” 

A video of Ms. Palmer's exhibit can be found HERE.