Beatriz Williams: the Sea to the City
Nuestra Tierra
(2025) acrylic on wood panel, 12×12 in.
Beatriz Williams is a Puerto Rican-born painter based in New York whose work explores identity, heritage, and belonging. Raised in Westchester, New York, she often felt caught between two worlds. While she was connected to her Puerto Rican roots, she also grew up shaped by life in the United States. That experience led her to use art as a way of understanding where she comes from and how those different influences fit together.
Working primarily with acrylic paint, Williams combines portraiture and nature to examine the relationship between people and the places that shape them. Her paintings are inspired by Puerto Rico, its landscapes, and the family history tied to the island. Through her work, she reflects on the connections that exist between ancestry, memory, and the natural world.
Recuerdos Del Alma
(2025) acrylic on wood panel, 12×12 in.
A central idea in Williams's practice is that humans are not separate from nature. She sees the land as a living record of history, carrying the stories of those who came before us. By bringing figures and natural elements together in her paintings, she explores how identity is formed through both personal experience and inherited history.
For Williams, painting is also a way of honoring past generations. Her work draws from family stories and cultural traditions while creating space for reflection on what it means to belong. Each piece represents part of an ongoing journey to better understand her heritage and her relationship to the world around her.
Through this process, Williams invites viewers to consider their own connections to home, family, and place. Her paintings offer a reminder that identity is not fixed but shaped by the histories, communities, and landscapes that stay with us throughout our lives.
La Casa de Titi Lydia
(2025) acrylic on wood panel, 12×12 in.
The visual language of his work is built through intention and atmosphere. Rather than relying on excess, Joar allows subtle details light, gesture, texture, and composition to carry the emotional weight of an image. Each photograph feels deliberate, inviting viewers to slow down and sit with a feeling rather than search for an immediate answer. His images often evoke a quiet sense of nostalgia, creating space for reflection and personal interpretation.
That emotional depth is rooted in his lived experience. Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in the United States, Joar's perspective was shaped by growing up between cultures and identities. The feeling of never fully belonging to one place informs much of his creative practice, influencing the way he observes the world and the stories he chooses to tell. As he explains, “Taste in art is a direct result of life experience. As long as I am creating and photographing through my eyes, I am showing the full history of me.”
