Courtesy Raelis Vasquez
Raelis Vasquez, a New York and New Jersey-based artist, works from a bank of his memories and emotions to create tender and sincere paintings of Afro Dominican life. Usually featuring his kin and friends, the large-scale oil and acrylic works are cast in warm and welcoming colors. In one painting, a brown-skinned girl in a tubi, a tubular hairstyle crafted by Dominican women to preserve our salon blow-outs, eats her breakfast. In other works, a Black woman bottle-feeds her baby while sitting in a bright blue rocker, and a young Black couple await their destiny as they document their nuptials on their wedding day.
Touching on race, class and immigration, Vasquez taps into his first-hand experiences and that of his subjects. The genesis of Vasquez’s pieces start with photographs, which he takes himself of family members in the US or back in the Dominican Republic, staging relaxed scenes with them that turn into more profound moments on the canvas.
