Payton Harris-Woodard’s (b. 1996, Chicago) earned her Bachelor of Arts from Columbia College Chicago, and her Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2022. Her writing and artwork has been published in Hyperallergic Magazine, Hand Paper making Magazine where she published an interview with Howardena Pindell. Awards include the New Artist Society Full Merit Award at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Black Writers Fellowship with Hand Paper making Magazine; and, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts Fellowship. .

In a larger societal and historical context, Harris-Woodard’s work explores the emotional and psychological complexities of inhabiting the black female body, while simultaneously questioning lexicons of aspirational black imagery in society. Part monster, part deity, her figures reconcile with reflection, isolation, and difference in celebration of finding one's own voice through femininity, trauma and black surrealism. she juxtaposes ideas of beauty, while reclaiming a non linear journey of self-examination combining mundane and fantastical elements.