Interview: Kyle Yearwood
By Lia J. Latty
Published December 1st, 2020
Did you always know you wanted to be a creative and a photographer?
KYLE: Growing up I was conditioned to focus on career paths that would bring in money and success, only in terms of money. So, even when I got to Morgan State University for college I ended up changing my major like five different times from business, to computer science to journalism. In all of those different pathways, I realized that I had to be somebody else in order to be successful. I came across the film program there and I just fell in love. I started off studying to be a filmmaker, and in that process I got a camera, and outside of class I would watch tutorials on photography. Mostly because this was right when Instagram came out and photographers were really thriving on Instagram. I really fell in love with street photography and architecture, so I wanted to do that at first. Then over time as I learned how to operate photoshop it became “okay, now I wanna do something a little bit more ambitious and creative”, and it’s just been a snowball effect since then. From the very beginning I’ve wanted to do photography as soon as I switched from the mindset of being whoever everyone wanted me to be and to what I wanna be.
How do you define your relationship with photography?
KYLE: Photography for me, the best way for me to say it is it’s fun. Like, if were to compare it to a sport, my favorite sport is basketball, I have just as much fun taking photos. An example of that is the feeling you get when you shoot that ball and it’s all net, the feeling you get when you take a picture and it’s fire?! That’s the same feeling to me. So it’s really fun. It’s the foundation of my artwork, so I always try to make sure I get an amazing photo to start with.
In what ways does photography function in your work?
KYLE: My artwork consists of 2D images, 3D, video and animation, but 2D is usually the foundation of how I start my process. I consider myself a surrealist compositor. Most of the time I’m just working with 2D still photographs, and if I can capture the photos myself versus using stock images the better. I actually started off as an artist, I started off with taking self portraits and creating surrealistic environments around that portrait, so yeah photography is the starting point of my creative process.
What does it mean for you to be the “Architect of Realities?”
KYLE: The “Architect of Realities” is a name I gave myself because if I could sum up my purpose in one sentence, it would be to inspire people to create their own reality. In myself, I came into that by getting to a point where I was fed up with being who everyone else wanted me to be, doing what everyone else wanted me to do, and just literally settling with the reality that I was force fed. And it wasn’t until I started using my mind and my creative expression to see things in a different way, that I finally felt like I knew who I was. So the Architect of Realities is literally like my superhero name, and to be that means that I don’t settle with the reality I’ve been given, I always try to create my own.
What inspired you to create this body of work?
KYLE: My artwork is inspired by my own personal healing journey. When I was first getting into digital art, I was going through depression and as I was coming out of that, digital artwork was there to help me express the things that I was learning as I was healing. As I learned to love myself, I used artwork to be able to share that gift with other people. As I learned to empower myself, I used my artwork as a way to share that with other people, and inspire them to love themselves and empower themselves. So literally everything I did to build myself up, the artwork is the tool to help other people.
How do you see your work evolving? Do you think your depictions of reality will develop any further?
KYLE: Technically, my skill set is always going to continue to expand. Right now I am endeavoring on truly mastering 3D modeling and animation, which is a very big step from photography and 2D compositing. So that’s something that will literally take my artwork into another dimension. That will open the door to virtual reality and augmented reality, so that’s the direction I’m going in. In terms of the story in my artwork, it will continue to go into the unknown. My artwork is based in the supernatural so I’m going to continue to strive to create something that’s never been seen before or never been looked at in a certain way before. And it’ll always be positive; that’s the one thing that will never change about my artwork. It’s always for the betterment of myself and others.
“My Blackness has never been a hindrance to my creative expression.”
As a Black creative, how have you navigated the art world/industry?
KYLE: My Blackness has never been a hindrance to my creative expression. My Blackness has always inspired my creative expression, and I think that it’s what makes my artwork unique. When people see my self portraits and the realities I create around them, when they see me flying or doing something powerful and magical, it truly inspires them. For me, I feel happy to be Black because I get to reach that little Black boy or Black girl who may not necessarily be inspired when they watch Harry Potter or Superman or all of these other white heroes. But I get to be me and in that little Black boy or Black girl’s eyes I can be a hero and they can be a hero too.
What do you hope people take away from your imagery?
KYLE: I always say that I want people to see the beauty of the world and see the beauty of themselves. So I want them to look out into their environment, look out into society and not see it for what it is but see it for what it can be. I want them to look in the mirror and not just see themselves for who they are but see who they really and truly are and see how powerful they are, see how magical they are, see how beautiful they are. If they can walk away with that just by looking at my artwork then I feel like my job is done.