SUMMITS OF THE CARIBBEAN

O ut of a dark, warm background comes the face of a young Caribbean girl. The light falls from one side and catches her face, her shoulder, and her braids, which seem frozen in mid-movement, one of them tipped with a flash of red. She smiles just a little, looking off to the side, and that smile is enough to fill the whole painting with life. She wears a blue mesh sports top, scattered with pale dots, over a white one showing underneath. It is plain, everyday clothing, and the painter treats it with the same care as her skin: every gleam in the fabric and every braid is worked out with patient realism. Her dark skin catches the light and glows in coppery tones against the shadow behind her. The oil on canvas handles light and shadow the way the old portraits did: a single source of light and deep shadow all around, with the figure rising out of the dark. It keeps all the attention on the girl's gaze and her expression, with nothing to pull the eye away. The title, Caribbean Heights, takes the portrait beyond a single person. The girl becomes the image of a whole land: its people, and the kind of joy that gets tested and refuses to give in. The strength and dignity of the Caribbean, told in a single face.