It is difficult to look at Carl Neita’s work without thinking of the Cuban artist Wifredo Lam.  Neita’s paintings, like Lam’s, include his own language of symbols and placement so that each canvas acts like a page of an ancient codex, written with imagery instead of words. Like Lam, Neita also tells a personal story of cultural ‘hybridity’, spiritual self-discovery and international adventures.  But Neita’s work is infused with his own language of bones and feathers and mystical surreal creatures. Lodged in the midst of this layered and mysterious landscape are the meanderings of the displaced, the alienated and the rebellious. Neita’s Blue Matador is yet another example of a self-portrait of the Diaspora body, skin folded back to reveal its elegant and resilient backbone.  Neita received his MFA in 2000 from Howard University where he received numerous awards in drawing and painting. He has been the recipient of the DC Commission on the Art and Humanities Grant and two National Endowment for the Arts grants between 1996 and 1998. He lives and works in DC.

 “Nurtured by strong familial bonds, richened by childhood images of mystery and mysticism, expanded by education at home in Kingston, Jamaica, in Europe and in North America, further deepened by the quest for spiritual self-discovery and universal understanding, my personal experiences contribute to a colorful reservoir of subliminal imagery.”