Amani Lewis is a Baltimore-based artist whose powerful mixed media portraits bring visibility, dignity, and narrative depth to the individuals and communities shaping urban Black life. Blending photography, digital distortion, and layers of vivid paint and texture, Lewis’ work transforms everyday images into visual testaments of resilience, healing, and ancestral connection.Lewis’ artistic voice is deeply rooted in community storytelling and social restoration. Their series Negroes in the Trees explores the intersections of race, nature, displacement, and spiritual belonging. Set against urban backdrops, each work blurs the line between human form and environment—inviting viewers to witness a vibrant reimagining of Black identity, memory, and connection to land in spaces that have historically erased or overlooked both.Through the use of topographical linework, map-like distortions, and hyper-saturated color, Lewis reclaims visual and narrative power from the media’s often reductive lens on Baltimore and its people. The resulting works pulse with life—layered with heat, movement, joy, and history. Behind each portrait is a real relationship: Lewis photographs their subjects and collaborates with them, often sharing a portion of artwork proceeds with those featured—redefining what it means to represent a community with care.More than portraiture, Amani Lewis’ art is a reclamation—a mapping of place, memory, and Black presence in all its layered complexity. Their work is collected nationally and continues to challenge, energize, and transform how we see people, power, and place in contemporary fine art.