Tropical Visions

As a genre, landscape painting has a long and illustrious history: from the pastoral scenes of Dutch seventeenth-century painters to the eighteenth-century convention of the “Grand Tour” in Europe and the accompanying depictions of ancient ruins and Romantic vistas to the popularisation of painting outdoors (or “en plein air”) by the French Impressionists in the latter decades of the nineteenth century.

In Cayman, our terrestrial landscape has provided a similarly generative source of artistic creativity. From the delicate mangroves of the North Sound to the dramatic cliffs of the Bluff, generations of artists have attempted to capture the essence of Cayman’s varied scenery, as well as the elusive quality of light and atmosphere that permeates our shores. Adopting a plethora of styles and techniques, the artists in this exhibition offered a unique perspective on the art of landscape painting in Cayman and its evolution over time, providing a visual record of a rapidly changing physical and cultural environment. Collectively, these “Tropical Visions” depicted the scenery of our everyday experience — the abundant tropical flora and lush vegetation of our Islands — while also meditating on the artist’s eye and the act of looking itself. In this way, the bright red leaves of a Poinciana tree in bloom not only provided a moment to contemplate an object of beauty and the splendour of creation, but also an opportunity to reflect on how we envision and transcribe the world around us.

Spanning over 50 years, Tropical Visions encompassed some of the earliest works in the National Collection: paintings by artistic pioneers Charles Long and the visionary Gladwyn K. “Miss Lassie” Bush, iconic watercolours by Joanne Sibley, Janet Walker, and Debbie Chase van der Bol, as well as recent acquisitions from the National Gallery’s permanent collection that had never before been publicly exhibited. Through a half-century of Caymanian art, this exhibition took the viewer on a journey that told a still unfinished story, tying the work of contemporary artists to a lineage of landscape painting that lives on to this day.