Melanocyte

For a few months I kept riding past this huge, empty steel frame on the way to work and had been thinking about filling the space. I watched a new Keith Haring film and got really inspired and I hadn’t had an exhibition since last Summer. Therefore, I thought ‘fuck it’, and decided to hang something. 

For a while I had wanted to draw something about melanin. Every time I research anatomy I notice that humans are mostly only portrayed with caucasian skin. I find this so weird. It’s examples like this that erase black people and people of colour from society and I find that so problematic. I wanted to be sensitive with how I approached this illustration. I didn’t want to be the white boy from England jumping onto the “trend” of BLM. I felt as if drawing a melanocyte, which is the cell that produces melanin, would be a good way for white folk to understand variations of skin colour and why. Melanocytes are melanin-producing neural crest-derived cells located in the bottom layer of the skin’s epidermis, the middle layer of the eye, the inner ear, vaginal epithelium, meninges, bones, and heart. Melanin is a dark pigment primarily responsible for skin colour.