Yogis in the Caribbean

Yogis in the Caribbean emerged during my first full year living in Puerto Rico, while I was staying at my grandmother’s house during the pandemic. I was painting constantly, teaching yoga virtually, and becoming completely intoxicated by the tropical landscape around me.

Yoga had become an unexpected anchor—not only physically, but mentally—and I found myself endlessly drawn to painting the female body in motion: stretching, folding, balancing, surrendering. At the same time, the scale, color, and wildness of Caribbean plant life felt impossible to ignore.

I began layering the two together, allowing bodies and botanicals to overlap until the figures seemed to become part of the landscape itself. Looking back, this series marks an important turning point in my practice. The expressive figures, saturated color, gestural brushwork, and relationship between the feminine body and the natural world that began here would become central to the visual language of my work.