St. Thomas State of Mind
Exhibition dates: April 6 - 13, 2023
Opening reception: Thursday, April 6th, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Floating on the Surface, oil on canvas, 2022
Banana Tree Forest, oil on canvas, 2022
Coral Sunset, oil on canvas, 2023
Palm Tree Sun Light, oil on canvas, 2022
Artist Statement
This body of work is fully influenced by the connection to my tropical Caribbean home of St. Thomas USVI. My work explores creating something that encourages the viewer to venture into the painting wanting to be there through bright tropical colors and fluid differentiating brushwork. Caribbean artists with similar techniques, such as Hulda Guzmán and Peter Doig, capture a mythical dreamscape feeling in their work. In trying to capture that as well, the process of this work includes combining three aspects of memories, family photographs, and the influence of the natural environment to create an atmosphere of expression of the nostalgic past. Each work is completed with an intentional but experimental sensibility, creating very colorful spaces that ask to be examined. This body of work has the undulating transitional movement from realistic and literal towards an abstracted, psychedelic, loose environment. The same undulating movement is correlated with the submersive feeling of being underwater, a feeling that is expressed meticulously throughout this work. Accompanying these personal moments of living on an island are the lush shades of green, turquoise ocean, and the warm lighting and colors of sunsets and flora that first cultivated a lifelong creative motivation. These works show a sense of peaceful freedom expressed through Caribbean color combinations and trying to emulate the beauty that I was surrounded by.