About
Victorious McLeod paints in Brooklyn. Self-portraiture across painting and film, one practice in two materials. The Dreamer juried into the 27th Carroll Harris Simms National Black Art Competition (African American Museum, Dallas, 2023). Crayons screened at Black Harvest Film Festival / Gene Siskel Film Center (2023) and Newport Beach Film Festival (2025). Apprenticed under David Molesky (2018) and Richard T. Scott (2017). United Arts Individual Artist Grant (2023). Paintings sold through Stella Jones Gallery, New Orleans, and into private collections.
I paint myself, and the painting is the work of repair. Not a picture of repair — the act of it. The self-portrait is the method, not the subject. I use it the way speech therapy uses a mirror: you can't correct what you can't see, so you put the self in front of the self and study it until something moves.
That's what each canvas is — a session. I take a part of me that's been carried since childhood — ADHD, the pride and bravery he armored himself with, the states he learned to dissociate into — and I stand it up where I can look at it. Painting it is how I work it. The Shogun. The Day Dreamer. Self Portrait in the Winter. Each one a position I had to hold long enough to paint my way out of.
Self Care is the current series, and the title is literal. The anchor is a dual self-portrait: me, now, holding me as a child. My short film Crayons is that child alone — late-nineties Florida, a Black boy learning to use art the way other boys learn to use fists. The film documents the wound. The paintings are the tending of it.
These are art therapy principles used as craft — the mirror, the externalized self, the image you make so you can finally look at it without flinching. This is what care looks like when you make it with your hands.
For All inquiries and General Information, please contact me at info@victoriousmcleod.com
CV
Exhibitions
Solution Collective Group Exhibit,
Orlando Fl 2012
Solution Collective at Orange Studios,
Orlando Fl 2014
Solution Collective “-Isms”
Orlando Fl 2015
Group Exhibit Curated by Brad M Biggs
Orlando Fl 2015
“Ad Astra” Group Exhibit Sponsored by Dick Blick 2017
New York, NY
Solution Group Exhibit at Kissimmee City Hall 2021
Orlando, FL
“Split the Difference” Group Exhibit at Osceola Arts 2021
Orlando, FL
Solution Group Exhibit at Stella Jones Gallery 2021
New Orleans, LA
Fusion Fest Feature 2021
Orlando, FL
FAVO Artist Feature March 2022
Orlando, FL
Fabrications at City Arts Factory
Orlando, FL
Acquisitions & Awards
“Dreamer” Acquired by African American Museum in Dallas 2023
United Arts Individual Artist Grant 2023
Divergent Film Festival; “Crayons” Selected 2024
Black Harvest Film Festival; “Crayons” Selected "2023
Orlando International Film Festival; “Crayons” Selected 2024
Detroit Black Film Festival; “Crayons” Selected 2023
Publications
Male Muse Online Publication 2017
Adorn Me Online Publication 2019
Orlando Weekly March 2021
Education
Atelier Assistant to Richard T Scott 2017
Atelier Assistant to David Molesky 2018
Bachelor’s of Arts: Film, University of Central Florida 2023