Yejide of lwoFrom the Artist To see is to know. But how can we know the unseenthe histories, the stories, or the names of a people that were undocumented or erased? I asked myself that question late one evening as I looked at the sun setting behind the hills on the Bay of Portobelo on the Caribbean coast of Panama. The view from my studio faces the ruins of a dock that was, at one time, the first encounter with Tierra Firme for many weary, shackled, and enslaved

has become an "it"to be drained and ravaged for our own desire

But it is also the object’s ability to act as a rhizome

Theyare merely individual images that I have found interesting

My current paintings explore iconography arrived at over the last 15 years

Puerto Rican Prisoner of War

La Vaughn Belle lives and works in the Virgin Islands

and naturalistic formations in nature

in this case

helping us to reach our inner humanity and then

I consider myself an artist and have been that all my life

that’s not good

the spirits