Puerto Rican Landscapes

I was introduced to plein air painting as a teenager by my Art Students League of San Juan instructor, Carmelo Fontánez. Having practiced it at such a young age left me with a sense of how important it is to sit with the environmental changes all around us as populations move, neighborhoods gentrify and developers demolish historical buildings. With this in mind I travelled to Puerto Rico in early 2020 and managed to paint outdoors in the island’s tropical climate. I used acrylic because it doesn’t dry as fast in a high humidity environment and is a less demanding medium than oil. I couldn’t be very picky about locations since they depended on whether I could reach them early enough and also on the painting spot knowledge of friends. These paintings have never been in a show but represent some of my best work outdoors.