"I’m a fat Black painter who is breaking barriers in a society that wasn’t built for me."

Deja Patterson is an artist who is currently based in the New York City area. She is a painter and photographer who addresses societal discrimination against plus sized people through her work. Voluptuous women are prominent in her examinations of body image, race and sexuality. She earned her Bachelor of Art in Art from Tougaloo College in 2017. She then received her Master of Fine Art in Studio Art from Queens College in 2020.

Hometown: New York, NY