Artist and illustrator Charly Palmer has been to the land of mythical energy vortexes – Sedona, Arizona – but for his own spiritual whirlwind he prefers Martha’s Vineyard. He and his wife, Dr. Karida Brown, first made their way to the Island during the pandemic. Their energy shifted from stressed to relaxed on their very first ferry trip over from Woods Hole, Palmer said in an interview from his studio in Atlanta, Georgia. 

“The first time we came, we drove...and we were sitting in the car, riding the ferry over, and we both kind of looked at each other and said, ‘What? What is this?’ It seemed like all the weight of life was leaving us,” Palmer recalled. He asked his wife if she felt it too and her response was the same. “It was like, what is this place? It’s like magic land and it was very spiritual.”

It was Knowhere Art Gallery co-owner Valerie Francis who first invited the couple to the Island. She came across Palmer’s work in 2019 while researching artists that she and her husband, Ralph Groce III, might approach about exhibiting in their Oak Bluffs gallery. Palmer and Francis began corresponding and, in 2021, Palmer had his first solo exhibit on Martha’s Vineyard. 

“As an artist, he’s a storyteller,” Francis said. “He reaches into history…. It is extremely important for him to help educate and be informative about Black people in America, especially celebrating our accomplishments and who we are, our contributions to the country and the world, and celebrating our spirituality and our culture.” 

Palmer has since exhibited every summer at Knowhere, and in 2021 – on just their second visit to Martha’s Vineyard – he and his wife, an Emory University sociology professor, decided to purchase a home in Vineyard Haven. They now spend as much time as they can on the Island. “Once you get there, you begin to see this connection, this special connection. It’s like, okay, I get why people want to keep it a secret,” he said. “We talk seriously now about how this is where we want to retire.”

Besides his exhibits, the gallery’s educational space, Center of Knowhere, has also hosted multiple events called Create with Charly, where Palmer visits with students, ages eight to sixteen, helping them produce their own masterpieces. “It’s almost like a fireside chat,” he explained. “I take a painting and maybe in two hours, I demonstrate how I do what I do.” 

Teaching and mentoring young people isn’t new for Palmer; he taught design, illustration, and painting at Spelman College for several years and currently teaches at Clark Atlanta University, both in Atlanta. He also illustrates children’s books – most recently How Sweet the Sound (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, January 2025) with author Kwame Alexander. 

Working on a deadline for a book project is far different than creating artwork for himself. Each book typically requires twenty to thirty paintings, more than is needed in an exhibit. “When I’m doing a painting or paintings for an exhibit, it’s solely me,” Palmer said. “When I’m [illustrating children’s books], there’s an editor, there’s an art director, there’s an author, and then there’s these children, and you’re aware that all of them are looking at you.”

Ezra Jack Keats’s children’s book The Snowy Day (Viking Press, 1962) made a significant impact on Palmer when he was a child. “I wasn’t quite even reading yet, but what I saw, and what resonated with me, was this beautiful Black child who looked like me and a mother that looked like my mother,” he said. “And I looked at that book over and over and over again, because it moved me in that way. That’s what I’m interested in. I’m interested in books or stories that inspire children to just ‘be.’”

These days, Palmer said he strives to live his life with intention and gratitude while aspiring to reflect those objectives to his students. “I think that one of the things that I do as a mentor, as a teacher, is to try to teach them how to see differently.” 

He recalled an event that happened at his Vineyard Haven home last summer that illustrates the connection between his experiences and his artistic expression – and a different way of looking at things. From a unique incident came ideas for future work. 

“I was in my [studio] space at the top of the house, and I saw something move to my right, and I looked, and there’s a hummingbird,” he said. “She had to go through the house to get up there because there wasn’t an open window upstairs. I thought, ‘How do I let her go without hurting her?’” 

Palmer quietly called his wife, who was in another part of the house, so that she could come up and help him get the bird out the window. They worked together, with Palmer lifting a window screen and Brown making sure the hummingbird didn’t make its way back downstairs. 

“We talked to her quietly, and I held the screen up until she saw the opening, and then she flew out,” Palmer said. “And there’s two things that kind of crossed my mind about that. A southern belief is that when a bird enters your house, it’s bad luck. It means that someone, a loved one, is going to pass away. And I’m like, ‘I have a funny feeling this means something else.’” He looked up what hummingbirds mean and learned that they are a symbol of prosperity, happiness, and joy. 

Palmer told the story about the hummingbird at his next Create with Charly session. “I decided that was the time to paint a bird, and so I did a demonstration, and I told the story of how the hummingbird came into the house.” That experience, he said, is one of the reasons he agreed to illustrate decorated Broadway actor and singer Billy Porter’s upcoming children’s book, Songbird. 

“Songbird is about Billy Porter as a child realizing: ‘I can really sing, and I can really sing well.’ And it’s about encouraging children to be comfortable with being different and finding their voice.”

Palmer also collaborated with his wife on The New Brownies’ Book: A Love Letter to Black Families (Chronicle Books, 2023), an anthology based on W.E.B. Du Bois’s groundbreaking children’s magazine, The Brownies’ Book, which ran from January 1920 to December 1921. They expanded on the original premise of giving Black children a way to see themselves in print and created a book filled with essays, photographs, paintings, short stories, and poetry by more than fifty contemporary Black artists and writers aimed to inspire Black children across the country.

“It was such a wonderful passion project for both of us, and it went so well that we’ve said we will never work together again,” he laughed. “We don’t want to ruin it.”

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Palmer’s art can be described much like his own character: unique, authentic, inspirational. He has a passion for celebrating Black life in all its glory without ignoring the oppression that still accompanies it. With subjects such as Black children, powerful Black women and men, and historical figures, his work is imbued with meaning. 

A recent series of acrylic paintings is based on the notable 1971 public television conversation between author James Baldwin (who has had a major influence on Palmer) and poet Nikki Giovanni. The two had a powerful discussion about police brutality, racial injustice, self-expression, and gender roles. Palmer captured the scene in a wooden circular image titled The Conversation. 

He also honors his ancestors through his work, including incorporating colorful flowers in his acrylics as a nod to his late mother, Irma Walker. Recently, though, after years of adding flowers to many of his paintings, he stopped focusing on that aspect of his work. “My mom passed away in 2008, and I began painting flowers as a tribute to her,” he said. “While flowers will still appear in my work occasionally, I believe it’s time to move forward.” 

Since coming to the Island, Palmer has begun to incorporate Vineyard landmarks into his work. Recent examples include two young girls in Ocean Park, gingerbread cottages and the bandstand visible in the distance, and families gathered in states of power and repose on the beach.

In addition to his personal work, Palmer’s career includes several important commissions. He created the posters for the 1996 summer Olympics, which took place in Atlanta, and both Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and Howard University in Washington, D.C., commissioned him to complete artwork to mark their 150th anniversaries. Musician John Legend also selected Palmer to create a portrait for the cover of his Grammy–winning album Bigger Love, released in 2020. That same year Time magazine asked him to produce cover art for a July issue titled “America Must Change.” Last year, Palmer painted a commissioned portrait of Constance Baker Motley, the first African American woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court and the first to serve as a federal judge, for the United States Postal Service’s Black Heritage stamp series for Black History Month. 

With work in both public and private collections, the sixty-five-year-old Palmer continues to be prolific. He spends hours each day in his studio painting, working on collage, and sometimes trying his hand at sculpture or other mediums. It was bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell who came up with the idea that it takes 10,000 hours of focused practice to master any field, Palmer said. “I’m way, way past 20,000 hours of working. Oh, but I absolutely love it.”

That love was apparent from a young age, when he was a boy growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Beatles were the first people he remembers drawing.

“When The Beatles first showed up on the scene, I was so fascinated by them,” Palmer remembered. “I loved their music, and they looked like they were having so much fun, and so I just drew and drew and drew…nonstop Beatles, Beatles, Beatles.” 

From those early days, his mother gave him the space to work on his art. “She was like, ‘I’ll find paper for you so you can do this.’ And she got me into a private art class on weekends.” 

What his mother didn’t know at the time was that Palmer was skipping the class and hanging out in the city for hours. “I was the only Black kid in the class,” Palmer said, “so I noticed very early on that the teacher didn’t give me very much attention.” Because he knew his mother worked hard in order for him to take the lessons, she didn’t find out until twenty years later. 

Palmer went on to win a scholarship to Parsons School of Design in New York City but instead chose the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which was closer to home. He transferred to the American Academy of Art College, also in Chicago, and earned his art degree there. 

“The Art Institute was only two hours away, ninety-eight miles away from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and so if I needed to get home or my mom needed to come visit me, we could get to each other very quickly,” Palmer said. “Really, it was convenient, and one of my mom’s best friends was a Greyhound bus driver, and his route was Milwaukee to Chicago. I could ride for free, and anytime I wanted to, I could just jump on that Greyhound and ride back home.” 

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These days, coming home means heading to Martha’s Vineyard. While the couple still resides part of the year in Atlanta, he said, that city has come to feel more like a place where they have a house. 

Working isn’t always a high priority when they are on the Island. Instead, what he and his wife do is “a lot of really nothing…hanging out on the deck, watching lots of TV, doing a lot of reading, just really taking it easy.” 

The couple completed some renovations last year to the home, and this year they hope to put in a garden and to take time to explore more of the Island. His wife’s book, The Battle for the Black Mind (Legacy Lit, 2025) – with a cover designed by Palmer – came out in May. She will spend time touring and making promotional appearances.

Palmer’s summer plans also include being part of the Knowhere Art Gallery’s exhibit Women Rising…Where Women Gather Power IS! The exhibit will stay up all summer long so that more people can view the work, and the artists can get more exposure, gallery owner Francis said. 

“The work [in Women Rising] is focused on the importance of women in families, in the community…and so artists will speak to it from different perspectives,” she explained. Francis said the gallery is beginning to branch out, inviting artists from different areas of the United States and from other countries when possible. “There’s only one race…it’s human,” she said. “We continue to expand our reach by bridging differences and bringing people together from all corners of the world.”

Francis, along with her husband, has become good friends with Palmer and his wife since they first met. “One of the things that I have been passionate about in regard to getting to know Charly and working with him,” she said, “is that I think he’s a little overdue for recognition of his art.”

She believes he’s worthy of broader acknowledgement for his body of work over the years, and she hopes it can be exhibited in a larger forum or venue. “I think there’s more to come from Charly that is very deserving.” Sometimes artists aren’t valued until they pass away, she said. “I would like it to be different for him, because he’s worked very hard, and he’s been very consistent in that he’s owned his own story and how he’s wanted to present himself in the world. Sometimes people or institutions don’t recognize that or see the value in that.”

Palmer, for his part, said he feels fortunate to make a living doing something he enjoys so much. When he begins a discussion with a group of children or adults, he tells them: “Find something that you enjoy doing and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.” 

“I just feel really, truly blessed to be living my truth, and, for the most part, enjoying my truth,” he said.