The impetus for the 'Colored' series was a group of workshops for young children, ranging in age from 3 to 7 years, that Ligon put together during the summer of 2000 while in Minneapolis preparing for his show at the Walker Art Center that fall. Interested in the ways young children respond to images and words, Ligon brought in images from 1970's afrocentric coloring books printed on newspaper and asked the children to color the images in. The result was a group of drawings that have influenced and inspired an entire new body of work.

The coloring book images can be classified in two types: alphabet and figurative. In the alphabet group letters are drawn in an exaggerated scale with words that begin with that letter shown opposite. Illustrating the stereotypical afro slant, the letter 'B' is shown next to 'bad (ba-a-a-d)' and 'brothers.' Similarly, the figurative images range from a pensive Malcolm X and gold-chained Isaac Hayes to a young African girl and a group of children playing basketball. These everyday representations of black life are intricately connected to the Civil Rights and Black Power movements that preceeded them and suggest an insertion of black people into the greater American psyche.

Ligon's exhibition at Anthony Meier Fine Arts will consist of 17 drawings based on the Minneapolis children's drawings. Similar images reproduced as large-scale silkscreens on canvas will also be shown.