Latin American and Caribbean Oil Paintings

This is the loudest collection on the site, and deliberately so. A mask maker surrounded by finished vejigantes in Puerto Rico, a mezcal distillery in Oaxaca at dusk, a ceremony under a cotton tree in Haiti, a ballcourt in play as the light goes. Colour here is not decoration, it is the subject.

What is in this collection

Around eighty paintings in four groups. Craft and carnival covers the vejigante mask maker at work and the making that goes on behind a festival. Belief holds the Vodou lwa, Baron Samedi and Maman Brigitte among them, painted as figures rather than as curiosities. Cities and colonial architecture takes in the Cartagena clock tower and the old walls. Pre-Columbian and land reaches from a Mayan ballcourt at dusk to the floating gardens of Xochimilco.

The palette is saturated and the light is late. These paintings are made to carry a wall on their own.

How each painting is made

Nothing here is printed. Each canvas is painted in oils after you order it, by an artist working from the reference on the page. The lead time runs in weeks and no two canvases are identical.

You set the dimensions rather than choosing from a fixed list. Three finishes are available: Simple for a clean, even surface, Texture for visible brushwork, and Museum for the heaviest impasto.

Choosing one for a room

Strong colour needs quiet around it. One large canvas on an otherwise bare wall will do far more than three smaller ones, and these subjects suit a dining room, a bar or a restaurant where the noise of the picture matches the noise of the room.

In a home, hang them where there is space to step back. Tell us the wall and we will suggest a proportion.

A place or a celebration of your own

If you have a photograph from a festival, a city or a family house, it can be painted the same way. Send it and an artist will look at it before anything is agreed. Shipping is free worldwide.