My work usually chases light, tide, and the quiet of looking. This time I chose something else. I chose our landfill.
It felt like an essential turn. The Biennial at The National Gallery of The Cayman Islands invited artists to explore archipelagos and ecological legacies, preservation, sustainability, environmental concerns. I sat with that for a while. Beauty has its place. It heals, it opens the heart. Yet beauty can also soften urgency. I wanted to create a painting that unsettles, even disgusts, and in doing so wakes something that beauty sometimes lulls to sleep. It was a challenge I had never taken on before.
The landfill is not a distant idea. It is a living mountain that grows with our habits. It holds out yesterday’s plastic and the party we threw last weekend. It holds the bottle that could have had another life. It holds all the quiet consequences of convenience.
In the studio I kept asking, how do you paint a warning without turning it into spectacle? How do you honour the land while showing the harm us human’s inflict on it. I resisted every impulse to prettify. I leaned into unsettling texture and uneasy colour. The toxic nature of this subject can be felt through the art. That tension is deliberate. It is a mirror, not a window.
I am not interested in shame. I am interested in responsibility, shared and practical. If the work lands as a knot in the stomach, good. That knot can be a compass. Let it point toward action. Let the discomfort move through you and turn into a decision, then a habit, then a conversation that shifts policy.
Here is what I am practicing in my own life and what I invite you to consider as you stand with the painting.
- Refuse when you can, reduce when you cannot, reuse whenever possible, recycle as a last step, and repair as a default.
- Choose glass or metal over plastic where there is a choice. Carry what you can carry: water bottle, coffee cup, reusable grocery bags.
- Support local businesses that minimise packaging.
- Join a beach clean up. Bring a friend. Bring a child and a dog!
- Write to our representatives. Ask for a clear, measurable plan for waste management, with timelines and public reporting. Ask for investment in reduction, reuse, composting, recycling, and energy recovery that is safe and transparent.
The painting is not a solution. It is an invitation. Stand in front of it and feel what rises. If it is discomfort, stay with it. If it is anger, aim it wisely. If it is grief, let it be a truth that connects rather than isolates. Then do one small thing today. Then do one larger thing this month. Small things stack. Large things require many hands. And the journey won’t start without our first step.
I still love painting beauty. I always will. Sea light will pull me back, and palm shade, and the sunrise and sunset of Cayman Kai is always my favourite topic. But I believe clarity includes all of it, the tender and the urgent. This work belongs to the urgent. It sits at the edge of what we would rather not see, and asks us to look. Not to punish ourselves, to empower ourselves.
If you visit the Biennial, take your time with the piece. Step close. Step back. Notice what your body does. Notice your breath. Let the image be a conversation starter, with yourself, with your family, with your community. If you share it, share an action with it. If you bring someone to see it, leave with a plan you can carry forward together.
Thank you to the National Gallery team and the Biennial jurors for creating a space where this kind of work can live. Thank you to everyone who stands before it with an open heart and a willing mind. May we choose well, until “Mount Trashmore” stops growing, and our Legacy is a positive one.
“Landfill or Legacy?”
40″ x 40″
acrylic, Caribbean Sea salt, Cayman Sand, coffee, discarded plastic waste on canvas.
2025
Framed in white wood floating frame.
