About the Artist

 Steven Cozart is a visual artist who combines illustrative and figurative imagery with objects and symbols to create provocative visual works and spark conversation that challenge social myths and beliefs in and about the African American community.

Cozart has a BFA in Art Education from East Carolina University with a concentration in printmaking and drawing.

He has exhibited widely, including in group, solo and juried shows at the African American Atelier, The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Arts (SECCA),  the Nasher Museum,  the Harvey B. Gantt Center for American Arts and Culture, the Center for Visual Artists (CVA), Weatherspoon Art Museum, Durham Arts Guild, Greenhill Center for NC Art,  and the Greenville Museum of Art.  

He is the recipient of the 2016 Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize from Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies and earned Best in Show at the All Members Juried Exhibition at the CVA in 2013.

Cozart’s piece Crown of Thorns is featured in the book Shifting Time: African-American Artists, 2020-2021,” published in 2022 by the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African-American Arts.  He currently teaches Visual Arts and Computer Graphics at Weaver Academy for Performing and Visual Arts.

 About the Artwork "Lightheaded and Free"

Artist statement: "In conversations that originated in discussing Colorism with close friends and family members, one of the topics that consistently came up among women was related to texturism, which is discrimination faced by those with coarser and more Afro-textured hair, and is based on the premise that hair textures closer to the hair textures of white people are more acceptable. In conversations with my wife and daughter, there was a discussion about the decision to wear their hair in its natural state and how liberating it was to do so. This image is an attempt to illustrate the feelings described by them to me."