Bernard Hoyes’ colorful and rhythmic compositions of African-based ritual scenes in Jamaica explore a traditional Jamaican iconographic subject. Hoyes’ depictions of religious scenes explode with vibrant colors that evoke African ancestry and influence in the contemporary Jamaican ritual. Hoyes’ canvases are painted with powerful yet detail-oriented precision. The result is a collection of images that hint at movement and pulsate with color. In Hoyes’ expressive compositions people melt into each other joined by a mutual spiritual ecstasy. In this series, Rhythms on Canvas, the community of the spirit is recorded by Hoyes with an almost ethnographic accuracy. Hoyes’ migration to the United States when he was 15 removed him from a community of ever increasing violence in North Street, Kingston. Throughout his career as an artist, Hoyes has consistently worked with youth in both the United States and the Caribbean. In the 1970s Hoyes founded the Caribbean Cultural Institute and Caribbean Arts, Inc. His works can be found in the collections of Natalie Cole, Richard Pryor, and Oprah Winfrey. He lives in California with his family.

“I have been a creator of art, symbols of ancestral echoes since a child in Jamaica… The images I convey symbolize a culmination of these ancestral echoes brought to classical form.T hey are contemporary, eternal in spirit, and stand as praise to our existence – past, present and future.”