In this four-part interview, Kelvin Curry talks to Kakoli Mitra about his journey as an artist in East Oakland, California, US. When he was a child in the 1970s, his mother and grandmother encouraged him to hone his artistic talents through a summer scholarship program for inner city kids at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. After studying graphic design and fine art, in 1989, he participated in his first group art show at the National Institute of Art & Disabilities (NIAD) in Richmond, California. Kelvin started off capturing black life. As his life evolved, so did his art; he began seeing and interpreting what was around him differently and shifted from realism to surrealism. He talks about how his experience as an African-American man, whose ancestors were forcibly displaced from their lands, shapes the way he sees the world, and in turn, how he creates the world in his art. His art portrays love and affection, reflecting the warmth of his upbringing first by two women and then his uncles. His current art series, Compartmentalization, depicts the juxtaposition and complementarity of these male and female energies. Kelvin talks about the black art scene in the US when he was coming up as an artist: about the Essence Music Festival in New Orleans and the importance of the Cosby Show (1990s television show) that popularized African-American art. In 2001, at a time when black art shows were rare, Kelvin organized a group show of 50 black artists in Oakland.