After more than a year of planning, I’m thrilled to finally introduce you to IN FAYNE: Step Into a Love Like This. Fayne, is a blend of our names, Fay and Dwayne, which has now become the embodiment of our relationship. Our friends even use it to refer to both of us at the same time, and we’ve replaced the term “Quality Time” with “Fayne Time.” We were so passionate about the term that we registered Fayne, LLC as a legal business entity and created brands like Masked X-Mas, Dare or Drink, and Doggy Spice. Essentially, Fayne represents love, and walking INTO FAYNE means walking “into love.”

The theme song for this show is “Step Into a Love Like This” by Lauren Hashian because when you step through those doors, you’re entering a journey through our love story. With each step you take, you’ll travel back in time deeper into the stages of our relationship, building up to the moment when I knew I was in love with you. That’s why the letters are designed as a staircase and the gradient of colors at each level depicts the depths of our relationship we are about to progress through. Each step is an artistic expression paired with one of our top ten love songs, creating an immersive and sensual experience. Click here to open the playlist and listen as you go through each piece of the show. Also, if you take a closer look at the cover of this design, you’ll see that INTO FAYNE is made up of every song we’ll listen to.

INTO FAYNE is a celebration of love in all its myriad forms. It is an invitation to step into our world, to experience our relationship and all the beautiful moments that we have shared. With INTO FAYNE, I hope to showcase the transformative power of love and all that it can bring to life. So come, step into a love like this, and experience the beauty of Fayne for yourself.

REMEMBER and the song “So My Darling” by Rachel Chinouririis declare eternal love and commitment between us. Her soft repetition of “so my darling” beautifully captures the depth of affection and endearment I feel for you. The lines “when our hairs are turning grey, won’t even remember our younger days” reminds me that as we grow old together, the memories of our past may fade.

The painting itself immortalizes the epic moments we’ve shared over the years. To make the background feel like memories, I collaged black and white photos and used spray paint to create a grainy, faded depth effect. Just as distant memories fade furhter into the past, the farther you step away from these photos, the more difficult it is to see them. The lyrics “you are my best friend, remember I’ll always love you” highlights the firm foundation of our friendship and the enduring nature of their love, which will stand the test of time. The further you step away from REMEMBER, the background fades, but the larger painting of us embracing each other becomes clear.

However, as the background fades, the larger painting of us embracing each other becomes clear. This represents the piece’s central theme: even if you forget all of these memories, I want you to remember I’ll always love you.

This stage in our relationship is when it hit us that life is short and we need to cherish every moment. Sometimes we catch ourselves forgetting little things, and that’s scary. As time flies by and memories come and go, we should always remember where it all started and where we’re going. REMEMBER represents our unwavering love, companionship, and dedication that transcends age and time.

“Alone With You” by Alina Baraz teaches that home is not a physical location but rather a person. This song became the theme of our 21-day road trip, and as fate would have it, it perfectly encapsulated the entire experience.

Even before the trip, we were drawn to this song’s lyrics and melody, but it wasn’t until a heartbreaking moment during our journey that I truly understood its significance. When I received the news of my friend’s passing, we were surrounded by the vast emptiness of the Great Sand Dunes. At that moment, we were alone, but I felt a sense of comfort in your presence. You felt like home.

I created the design HOME as a memento of that moment. It depicts the beauty of being alone in nature with someone who makes you feel safe and supported. The design is on a blanket because you never leave home without your blanket; it’s where you find comfort. Thank you for being a comfort and safe space for me to freely express my hurt.

As the trip progressed past that point, being alone with you in the middle of nowhere felt more natural than the hustle and bustle of everyday life back in Atlanta. That trip signaled the stage of our relationship where we became each other’s home. Life was never the same.

LITTLE GIANTS IN A BIG SEA and “This Universe” by UMI showcase our existential moment at 2AM under the stars at the edge of the Grand Canyon. This was the ultimate Fayne Time. It felt like we were the only two people on “this planet in this universe”; that felt like home. We were cuddling and bouncing thought-provoking ideas back and forth. In the middle of discussing how small we felt on this massive planet, a scary phenomenon happened. For a moment, we felt like we were Earth floating in the dark lonely abyss of space. We were huge. The photo below is the only evidence we have of that magical moment.

The lyrics “we are little giants in a big sea” described this phenomenon. We were humbled to exist and grateful to share lives with each other. I’m glad that I could live this life with you, spend this time with you, and feel alive with you.

The sky in LITTLE GIANTS IN A BIG SEA doubles as a starry sky and water droplets on the surface of a sea. The spiraling Milky Way that was visible in the sky that night doubles as a wave crashing above our heads. This is one of our most cherished moments because you really had to be there to understand how it felt. As difficult as it is to describe, LITTLE GIANTS IN A BIG SEA is my attempt at pulling us back into that magical night. I’m glad that we ended up together on this planet in this universe.

In Ariana Grande’s song POV, she asks one of the most profound questions we often wonder about each other: Why me? It’s a question that resonates deeply with us because sometimes we have bouts of insecurity, imperfection, or failure where we feel undeserving of love. Yet, in those moments, we choose to love each other even harder. If you ever ask yourself, “Why me?” I SEE YOU is my attempt at answering that question.

One night in July 2020, during a staycation, I was trying to draw you for the first time. But every time I made a mark on the paper, it felt like something was off. I wasn’t doing justice to who you are as a person. I started over and over again, trying to capture that essence I felt so strongly. As I flipped through page after page of failed attempts, I started to feel frustrated and defeated. When I reached the last sheet of paper in my sketchbook, something shifted. I realized that I was going about this the wrong way. Instead of drawing you, I attempted to draw your essence.

When I finished the drawing, I stepped back and looked at it, and I knew it was something extraordinary. It wasn’t a perfect realistic portrayal of what you look exactly like. It was something more than that. It represented who you are at your core, the qualities that make you unique, special, and irreplaceable in my life. I decided to call the drawing I SEE YOU because, at that moment, I caught a glimpse of your essence, your soul, and your heart, and I captured it all on paper. It’s the most artistic I’ve ever felt, and that’s why it doesn’t look like any of my other pieces. In a poem I wrote about this moment later, I said:

“...It feels like Christmas in July the way you gift me your presence. I’m flipping through pages and pages trying to capture your essence. I got lost in your beauty, and it led me straight to your mind. Human eyes have never seen the colors you beam from inside...”

I SEE YOU is a visual representation of how you make me feel. You’re vibrant, yet relaxing. You beam heartwarming colors and textures that scream love. You are fun, free-flowing, and creative, like the mark-making techniques. Just as the pastels overlay the watercolors that cover the pen, your mind and personality are layered with beauty and complexity. This is a piece of my point of view, a snapshot of the qualities that had drawn me to you in the first place.

HONORABLE and the song “Pretty Little Fears” by 6LACK and J. Cole combine to represent the power of vulnerability. The reference photo used to create HONORABLE was taken on our trip to Cancun. It was the pivotal night in our relationship when we poured our hearts out to each other, breaking down the walls we had built in our past relationships. We freely shared our emotions, like masterful poets. At that moment, we realized that the overwhelming feeling of love we were experiencing in silence was mutual. We weren’t crazy. We were just crazy in love. The light I saw in you is what you see in me.

HONORABLE symbolizes the poetic lines of love through its free-flowing crazy lines. The bold colors represent the energy that beamed from our souls during that moment. When J. Cole says, “I’m loving your light, vulnerable. Letting your guard down is honorable,” we’re reminded of how courageous we were to get to that point. It took months of patience for you to come out of your shell, but when you did, it was lightyears better than I expected. Thank you for “entrusting me with the key to your heart.”

Your beauty is truly encapsulated by PRETTY and the song “Pretty” by Col3trane and Mahalia. I still remember the first time I heard that song as I was sitting in the art studio, and it immediately brought you to mind. A vivid image of you appeared before me, so close that I could almost touch it. I was overcome with pure bliss and couldn’t stop smiling as I played the song on repeat, basking in the thought of your beauty.

Capturing your beauty on canvas was a challenge. I knew I wanted to paint PRETTY as if I drew it with a giant piece of red lipstick as a symbol of attraction, but I felt like it needed more. This version of PRETTY was meant to be that starting sketch for a more detailed portrait. However, after a few weeks of letting it sit idle as I worked on other pieces, I returned to it and was struck with a wave of admiration. This artwork portrays your beauty in its most fundamental form, with the simplest outline of your face, showing that you are effortlessly and unequivocally “goddam pretty.”

The song “Moment” by Victoria Monét perfectly describes the stage of our relationship where my life began feeling surreal, like I was living in a dream. I spent countless nights trying to make sense of how we ended up together because we didn’t find love; love found us. It felt like destiny had chosen me for you. 

The lyrics “I got a feeling that you brought me to you” made me feel like you spoke our connection into existence. We went from being childhood friends to going our separate ways, and somehow, we found our way back to each other. When we compared our old lists of qualities we were looking for in a partner, we realized that we had checked each other’s boxes. It was like we were always meant to be together, but it took us some time to notice it. Our relationship is the embodiment of “what you are looking for was right in front of you this whole time.”

When you look at the artwork PINCH ME, you feel what it feels like to question the nature of your existence. The steamy mirror reflects a distorted reality. Boldly plastered in the center of the piece is a hand-smeared infinity sign representing our souls finding this love in every possible alternate reality. It’s a beautiful and thought-provoking piece that speaks to the power of finding love in the infinite possibilities of the universe.

Here’s the trippy part. The closer you get to PINCH ME, the more you realize that the infinity sign is not painted on the front of the mirror. I painted it on the back of the glass before creating the mirror effect. In this way, PINCH ME is a reality check in itself, demonstrating the limitations of your perceptions.

The song “IVORY” by Tobe Nwigwe is about us experiencing the unfathomable feeling of love. As Tobe observes, “I swear it is hard to know about true love until you feel the essence.” When that essence hits us, we see the world in a whole new light. The brightness was so overwhelming that the feeling was indescribable. The only thing I knew for sure was that everything I thought I knew about love was turned upside down. Love isn’t something you can force or plan or anticipate. It’s a force that consumes your entire being, making the world feel malleable. It gives you contentment in a future full of infinite possibilities because as long as you have love in your life, everything will be okay. And when you find it, it becomes one of the few things in life that you simply know is true. I mentioned my certainty in a poem I wrote for you:

“The universe is expanding. Galaxies we’ll never reach.
Our oceans are vast; whew, they’re oh-so deep,
There’s infinite unknowns, but I know one thing for sure.
I believe with my soul that our connection is pure.”

The textured white overlay in the ESSENCE painting symbolizes love being something you must feel to understand. In this stage of our relationship, we felt textures of emotions we had never experienced before. Falling in love with you was the start of a life filled with unpredictability. Underneath ESSENCE’s textured coat of paint is a faint outline of me and you. I used the same reference photo from REMEMBER to foreshadow all the new experiences this new luminescent feeling has in store for our future. Bursting through our skin are the colors of our aura, an everlasting fire burning together as Fayne. 

I remember when I wrote you a poem titled Sapiosexual. It was a pivotal moment in our relationship, right at the beginning of our transition from friends to lovers. It was my declaration to love you slowly, patiently, and eventually deeply. The thing is, I wrote Sapiosexual unintentionally. 

I was alone in my room one late night listening to Taiwa by Marc Cary, and the words flowed to me. I played the song on repeat and started writing, and like magic, Sapiosexual was born. Taiwa represents the moment love came knocking at my door. Now, we listen to this as our theme song. It represents everything. It’s the accumulation of each stage we’ve been through and every stage we’ll go through. It’s a true work of art.

I didn’t plan on creating a piece of art for this song. How could I create a work of art that summarizes everything? It was a challenge where I respectfully accepted defeat. But just like how the poem Sapiosexual came as an accidental masterpiece, UNTITLED was born. 

UNTITLED started with my first attempt at creating LITTLE GIANTS IN A BIG SEA, but I wasn’t confident about where it was going, so I put it in the back room of my art studio. As I worked on each of the pieces in this show, I went into the back room and used this canvas as a sketch pad to test out techniques with different mediums before applying them to the final pieces you see in this show. 

One day, Omar came into the art studio so that I could show him two of the pieces in this show. In the middle of describing a piece to him, he cut me off, pointed to UNTITLED in the back room, and said, “That one is dope.” I responded with insecurity saying, “Oh no, ignore that one. It’s the one I messed up.” A few days later, Aleyah came into the studio, and while showing her some of the art, she caught a glimpse of UNTITLED and said the same thing. Then Brianna stopped by the next day and said the same thing. The third time was a charm. I asked myself, “Why do people keep cutting me off while explaining my art to tell me my sketch pad looked like art?”. And so I brought it out the back and thought about the advice I usually give other artists: “Art is what it is and not what it’s supposed to be.” 

Like the song Taiwa, UNTITLED is the accumulation of all our stages. It holds little pieces of every work of art in this show. Just like the poem Sapiosexual, this piece was born subconsciously.I didn’t know what I was creating art the entire time I was making it. And, just like the song Taiwa and the poem Sapiosexual, it’s one of my favorite pieces. It’s truly the most abstract work of art I’ve created, and because of that, it might just be my most significant work of art.