Collective Conversations: An artist’s tour of Trinidad with Estevan Dubrisingh Garcia

By: Tod Caviness

Published February 15, 2025

Estevan Dubrisingh Garcia laughs as he talks about the path not taken. As a young man, he developed an interest in medicinal botany but soon pivoted towards the art world. Ten years later, Estevan is an established painter, printmaker, and sculptor with several solo shows under his belt and an insatiable hunger for new inspiration both at home and abroad. Through it all, his style has never strayed far from his roots in Mexico and the Caribbean.

Creator Collective: So where did the initial interest in botany come from? It’s clear to see a love for the outdoors in your paintings, but was there another inspiration?

Estevan Dubrisingh Garcia: My dad’s father, he is a Trinidadian grandfather. He loved plants. I would spend all my afternoons when I was young out in the garden doing stuff, so I grew up absolutely loving plants. And I love science and geology and that kind of stuff and I figured botany was the way to go to get all of that in one.

CC: In terms of art, I assume that Trinidad is also a great source of inspiration. What is it specifically about the place?

EDG: To tell you the truth, what I see most when I am observing something that would turn into a painting is I see color. And if it's a landscape, I will see the sky. Those are the things I look at first. I don't know why but that's what I'm always drawn to. So if I'm doing portraiture or something it would start with a color for me. I would just start building the painting from there. Recently I did a commission for a client in Barbados and they are like, “Well, we want something pretty colorful” and that kind of stuff and I was like, “Well, what is your favorite color?”  And she said green. So I built the entire painting around that. Just from that one word. So I think that really is the base of a lot of my work and it aligns very well with Trinidad because Trinidadian painting is very colorful by and large. I mean, I'm sure you haven't heard of a lot of our painters but we have Boscoe Holder. And his brother Geoffrey Holder. He was one of the Bond villains [Baron Samedi, from the 1973 film “Live and Let Die.”]. They were both major painters here. A lot of their work starts with a color sketch. And I remember Boscoe Holder said years ago in an interview he starts all of his paintings by looking at the color wheel and deciding, “I want to paint the sunset.” So it aligns really, really well with my work, you know, looking back at the progression of Trinidadian painting.

CC: I can’t think of a more pure starting place than picking a color. Absent even a subject, you know? One thing that’s striking to me, though: Most of the pieces you have here on Creator Collective are black and white, with maybe a hint of muted color in the sunrise. Then I took a look at your Instagram and it’s very different! I was blown away by all the color.

EDG: (Laughs) The stuff on Instagram I really need to update. Last year in all the shows I did, I brightened up all the colors. Everything was neon shades, so yeah.

CC: So are shades of grey more what you’re exploring now? These landscapes here, you can tell the color is begging to explode but it feels like you are consciously stingy with it. You dole a little bit out into that sky to draw you in. Was that a conscious choice?

EDG: You said exactly what I was thinking when I was painting them. There's one in particular, I can't remember the name but it's sweeping hills and its black and white and a railing in front. That is on the drive to a very famous beach in Trinidad. You go over the hills, right, and there is a point that you're driving along like a cliff and in the evening, I remember I was looking at it very late in the evening. The sun was coming in and the whole place just turns kind of gold. And all you see is the color. And I remember when I was going to paint the painting I wanted to focus more on what you would see if you didn't see the color. So the landscape itself, the way that the light makes everything kind of soft. That's what I wanted to focus on. And even just black and white, I went in shades of black. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to show you there could be variation in a very muted one-color palette. That's what I went for in that one in particular.

CC: And as you said, most Trinidadian art tends to be very bright. So you’re kind of exploring the other side of that?

EDG: I think right now I'm painting in two very different roads. That is one. I'm doing a few things that are very muted, very tonal value, that kind of thing. And then on the other side I am painting very hyper-color kind of paintings. So I'm working on one that I mean, it has every color I can think of thrown onto the canvas. I'm trying to remember who. Somebody came to my studio recently and I had both types out. I had a very colorful oil drawing and I had the other one on the desk. He was like, is this a sketch for something?  No, I'm just painting two different things at the same time. I don't know, I've always been like that. I don't work on one thing at the same time.

CC: Just come back to whatever inspires you at the time.

EDG: Yeah.

CC: I know a lot of artists don’t like to pick a box on a particular style, but I've seen you describe yourself as neo-Impressionistic or New World Impressionistic. What does that mean to you?

EDG: One of my old galleries gave me the term and I figure it kind of works. Because my brushwork is kind of post-Impressionist, kind of neo-Impressionist. But at the same time I think that if you want to put me in a style it would be more Caribbean-Latin American painting. Because of the subject matter, because of the color. Like Mexican painting in particular is incredibly colorful, just like a lot of Caribbean art. So I figure if you put the two together it does kind of put me in a box. But at the same time I've tried to figure out what style I paint in and I can't really come up with anything, so I go with that. Maybe like a post-Impressionist Trinidadian painter if that makes sense.

CC: The more you talk about it the more adjectives you have to add.

EDG: I guess.

CC: So what would you want the artist community to know about Trinidad that they might not already know?

EDG: The art community in Trinidad is very knowledgeable of art. That's one thing about Trinidadians, we travel a lot. And if you are interested in something like art, you would travel to go see the art. So the art world here is full of knowledgeable collectors and painters and artists. It's really vibrant. Especially since we have a very famous Carnival in Trinidad! The art world here is heavily influenced by it. And because of that it really is intertwined with the music world and like, the entertainment world here so it's really a vibrant kind of moving and shaking community. Very interesting, very talented people. The artists here, I've met quite a lot of artists from all over the world and the artists in Trinidad ... I'm not knocking anybody but the artists in Trinidad are generally very, very multidimensional because many of them have their hand in Carnival. They'll be making masks, designing costumes. They'll be painting and sculpting. And some of them are in music and some are in theater. They bring them all together in all aspects of their work.

CC: So it's not a rarity to be somebody like you where you do primarily painting but you do sculpting, you do printmaking, etc.

EDG: Yeah.

CC: Since travel is such a big part of your inspiration also, what place is on your bucket list? Is there a city that you haven’t been to before that you’d want to paint?

EDG: I think that I'd like to paint … definitely Florence. I just think the light there is spectacular. I think the architecture is spectacular. And it's kind of like a birthplace. It's the birthplace of painting in the Renaissance, you know? It worked from Michelangelo, I hope it would work for me.

It’s true: When it comes to inspiration, there’s no substitute for travel. We’d like to think we’re a distant second, though. Creator Collective brings together artists from all over the world, giving them a place to create, market and learn. Whether you’re just learning your craft or have a portfolio bursting at the seams, we’ve got a place at the table for you.

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