Atlanta-based Artist, Khalilah Birdsong’s “There but for the Grace of You Go I” considers how memory, grace and human connection shape our capacity for resurgence, inviting us to reflect on our responsibility to one another.
These paintings explore the ways transformation emerges through what we carry, what we release, and what we reclaim. Layers disappear beneath successive passages only to resurface in unexpected ways, reflecting how lived experience is continually rewritten rather than preserved intact. Fractured passages, dense accumulations of paint, and moments of openness speak to vulnerability and resilience. What appears broken becomes the foundation for transformation.
“My layered abstract paintings are born through an act of persistence. Built over time through layering, concealment, excavation, and repair, each work carries the residue of what has been altered, endured, and reclaimed,” says Khalilah. “The surface becomes a site where experiences accumulate, traces remain, and new possibilities emerge from what has been carried forward.”
The title draws inspiration from the well-known phrase commonly attributed to the sixteenth-century English reformer John Bradford: "There but for the grace of God go I." Traditionally understood as an expression of Protestant humility, the phrase reminds us that circumstance, rather than virtue alone, often shapes the course of our lives. It reminds us that the distance between our own lives and another person's circumstances may be far more fragile than we imagine.
By shifting a single word, ”There but for the Grace of You Go I,” the title considers grace as something we receive and something we extend. While it echoes Bradford's expression, its inversion finds resonance within a broader lineage of collective care. It speaks to the understanding, deeply embedded in Black history and cultural memory, that survival is not achieved alone. Lives are carried forward through generations of witness, generosity, resilience and shared remembrance.
Abstraction offers a language for what resists certainty. It allows experience to exist beyond fixed narratives and creates space for reflection, connection and renewal. Within these works, loss and possibility coexist, suggesting that resurgence is not a return to what once was, but the continual reimagining of what is possible.
Ultimately, ”There but for the Grace of You Go I” is both an acknowledgment and an invitation. It asks us to consider whose grace has shaped our own lives, whose care has sustained us, and what responsibilities arise from that recognition. If our lives have been transformed through the generosity, witness, or compassion of others, how can we create the conditions for another person's resurgence?
Khalilah earned her Master of Fine Arts degree from Goldsmiths, University of London. Her paintings are held in private and corporate collections worldwide, notably the private collection of President Barack Obama, the Kenkeleba House Museum in New York and a corporate collection in Tokyo, Japan. Khalilah is a Hambidge Fellow and in 2019 she was invited to exhibit at the XII Florence Biennale.
"The Reclamation of the Galvanized," oil on canvas, 60 by 72 inches
"The Retrieval," oil on canvas, 22 by 16 inches
"The Constancy," acrylic on canvas, 31.5 by 24 inches
"Under the Hemlock," oil on canvas, 21.5 by 19.5 inches
"Under the Hemlock," oil on canvas, 21.5 by 19.5 inches
"The Riverlands," oil on canvas, 47 by 47 inches
"After the Drylands," oil on canvas, 60 by 48 inches
"The Path of Remembering," acrylic & oil stick on canvas, 48 by 48 inches
"The Gossamer Veil," acrylic & oil stick on canvas, 60 by 60 inches
"The New Current," oil on canvas, 30 by 30 inches
"Meadowlark," acrylic on canvas, 19.68 by 15.5 inches
"The Gnosis," acrylic on canvas, 21.5 by 19 inches
"Where the Larkspur Blooms II," acrylic on canvas, 18 by 18 inches
"The Codex," oil on canvas, 20 by 20 inches
"Within the Lark Meadow," oil on canvas, 40 by 40 inches
"Satsuki," acrylic on canvas, 18 by 18 inches
"Whisper Song," acrylic on canvas, 20 by 18 inches
"The Heathlands," acrylic on canvas, 27.5 by 25.5 inches
"The Awareness of Elsewhere," oil on canvas, 47 by 47 inches
Khalilah Birdsong (b. 1977, Cleveland, Ohio; raised in Atlanta, Georgia) is a visual artist known for her large-scale abstract paintings. She earned her Master of Fine Arts degree from Goldsmiths, University of London.
Khalilah’s work has been exhibited in galleries across the United States and internationally, including Atlanta, New York, Cincinnati, Hamburg, London, and Mallorca. Her solo and group exhibitions span the U.S., Japan, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Her paintings are held in private and corporate collections worldwide, including commissioned works and a piece in the private collection of President Barack Obama. She has also completed site-specific sculptural installations for corporate clients in Atlanta, Georgia, and Tokyo, Japan. In 2025, one of Khalilah’s paintings was acquired by the Kenkeleba House Museum (New York, New York).
Rooted in abstraction, Khalilah’s practice explores themes of survival and resurgence. Her process-led approach is marked by improvisation, spontaneity, and intuition. She layers and strips away paint to create richly textured surfaces—contusions, ridges, and moments of rawness that expose forgotten layers beneath. This tactile language is an invitation for viewers to engage emotionally and instinctively with the work.
Khalilah’s recent seven-year nomadic journey around the world deeply informed her creative process, instilling a disciplined and transformative perspective that continues to shape her artistic vision.
Her paintings evoke the scale and physical presence found in the work of Jack Whitten, Alfred Leslie, Joan Mitchell, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Ed Clark, and the later abstractions of Gerhard Richter. Like these artists, Khalilah achieves a compelling balance between physicality and precision.
In 2019, Contemporary Art Curator (London) named her among “100 Future Contemporary Artists.” That same year, she was invited to exhibit four large-scale paintings and a sculptural installation at the XII Florence Biennale. In 2020, she received a Hambidge Fellowship for the Creative Arts & Sciences. Khalilah currently lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia.
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