Paintings In The Garden VI - "I SEE You" Gallery
Held at
The Consulate General of The Republic of Trinidad & Tobago NYC on December 6th, 2024.
The piece was unveiled by Mr. Andre Laveau, Consul General of The Republic of Trinidad & Tobago NYC and the artist and founder of PITG, Mrs. Alicia Aberdeen-Jones
Yves and Zachary were born prematurely on April fool's day. Not by chance, but by design as this was the Lord's special mark on our life's portrait.
As toddlers, they were fun loving inquisitive little boys who were drawn to museums. They visited every single children's museum throughout New York City.
It was at the young age of 8 that their mom met Mrs Jones who took Yves under her wing. Yves was her first male student at her home school but she quickly recognized his skills. After a couple months Yves encouraged Zachary to join him for art classes with Mrs. Jones and together the three of them started to create magic.
In spite of their challenges being on the autism spectrum, with guidance from Mrs. Jones ,Yves and Zach have made the world their canvas and are working on their strokes to success, painting after painting which highlight their talents and abilities.
This has given us, as parents and their siblings a different perspective of life through their eyes. They display confidence, determination and pride on their easels and in their sketchbooks.
Recently their work have earned them medals and platinum awards in the statewide Texas Spring Art Show and the Rodeo Art Show. This earns their school much needed and well- deserved recogniton.
Art is the medium through which they express themselves and their sentiments to the rest of the world. Wonderful expressions that we not have been able to witness had it not been for art. We are beyond proud and are here from every masterpiece that is yet to come!
Twenty one-year-old Tyler Valdez Villaruel is a young, upcoming artist from Trinidad and Tobago. Because of his fascination with Greek mythology, quite a bit of his work tells stories of gods, heroes and ancient rituals. But he does not shy away from telling picturesque tales stemming from other themes. His work, through his still amateur but masterful strokes, tells stories of love and hate, peace and war, joy and sorrow, knowledge and power, endings and new beginnings, and everything else in between.
Tyler is still developing his own style, and his work frequently marries the old and the new – replicas of existing artwork seen through millennial lenses. He works well within his comfort zone of pen and ink and charcoal and graphite, but stemming from his desire to be a well-rounded artist, he is gradually venturing out into the use of other media.
From 2018 until his final year of secondary school in 2020, Tyler was mentored for by Trinidad and Tobago artist Fitzroy Hoyte, at the ThinkArtWorkTT studio. His artwork was featured twice in 2023 at the Rotunda Gallery at the Red House, Port of Spain – first in the gallery’s International Women’s Day Women in Tech DigitAll Innovation and Technology for Gender Equality exhibit, then in the Indian Arrival Day exhibit. The former piece, Wo-Volution, was inspired by TT-born AI ethicist Renee Cummings and he was interviewed for an article that was published in the Trinidad Newsday on March 27. Wo-Volution was one of three pieces exhibited at Paintings in the Garden 2023, in New York.
In 2023, Tyler also illustrated a series of children’s stories, Secrets of the Swamp, written by Julie Morton and published in the Trinidad Newsday. In May of 2024, he exhibited three pieces in the Artist Walk at the African Film Trinidad and Tobago Festival, at Queen’s Hall.
Having completed secondary school, Tyler did a course in Graphic Design and is currently a student at the Sangre Grande Educational Institute.
IG: @tylervillaruelart
Patrice is a self-taught artist, was certified as a visual artist by the Artist Registry of Trinidad and Tobago in 2021. She is a member of the Trinidad and Tobago Art Society (TTAS) and her collages have been exhibited with Women in Art, Think Artwork Studio, TTAS, the Rotunda Gallery of the Parliament of T&T and Horizons Gallery, in Port of Spain, Trinidad.
As an avid recycler, Patrice has been very intentional in working with a medium that incorporates the upcycling and repurposing of materials.
Violated (12” x 14” mixed media collage) was shown in August at Mille Fleurs earlier at an exhibition of the Ministry of National Security's Counter Trafficking Unit (CTU) and The Art Society of Trinidad and Tobago.
Both are mixed media collages. I upcycle materials to make my art using scraps of fabric, wrapping paper, carnival costumes, magazines, packaging etc.
Untainted
mixed media collage
23” x 27”
This piece captures the essence of a woman who radiates her natural beauty and embraces her authentic self within the purity of nature, untouched by social constructs.
Website: www.patricematthewsart.com