CreativeWaves, a BVI arts organization, has engaged over 350 students across ten schools — building an arts community that reaches from toddlers to professional artists.
Walk through Road Town and you might catch a mural that reads the landscape differently: a wall-scale wave, a cluster of sails, the curve of a hill rendered in acrylic. The British Virgin Islands are famously visual — water that shifts from turquoise to indigo, hills that plunge straight into the sea. But how do the people who live here translate that landscape into something you can carry home, hang on a wall, or touch? The answer is more layered than souvenir paintings. Across paint, wood, public murals, and festival arts, BVI artists have developed distinct ways of seeing and shaping the islands.
BVI artists capture the islands’ landscape through at least four distinct media — painting, wood carving, public murals, and festival arts — each filtering the place differently. Paint emphasizes light and color; wood carries the material landscape itself; murals embed landscape in shared public space; and festivals animate it through performance. None of these traditions is static, and their boundaries blur: a painter might carve, a festival might include a mural. The question is less about which medium is “best” and more about what each one reveals about the relationship between people and place.
| Medium | Primary Materials | Landscape Themes | Where to Experience |
|---|---|---|---|
| Painting | Acrylic, oil, watercolor | Coastlines, seascapes, hills, light effects | Women’s Vision Exhibition, Rondell Smith Exhibition |
| Wood Carving | Local hardwoods, driftwood, mahogany | Boats, sea life, island forms, waves | Long Bush Crafternoon, craft fairs |
| Public Mural | Acrylic outdoor paint, latex | Community identity, sea, sky, cultural symbols | Jost Van Dyke mural, Wheatley Wall |
| Festival Arts | Costume, music, dance, found objects | Landscape as stage, seasonal change | Performing Arts Festival, Pick + Paint at Full Belly Farm |
Each medium pulls a different thread from the same landscape. Painters work with light and atmosphere; carvers work with the island’s material body; muralists anchor images in public space; and festival artists turn the landscape itself into a stage. The following sections look at each tradition on its own terms, with attention to who makes the work, where it appears, and what it says about the BVI.
Painting the Islands: Landscape on Canvas
Exhibitions organized by CreativeWaves, such as the Women’s Vision Exhibition and the Rondell Smith Exhibition, regularly feature painters who treat the BVI landscape as their primary subject. The work ranges from realist seascapes to more abstract treatments of island light and vegetation. In February 2024, CreativeWaves held an exhibition at the H. Lavity Stoutt Community College that brought together painters working across these registers.
Across the region, the annual Emancipation Art Exhibition at Fort Frederik Museum on St. Croix — titled “Ancestral Memory and Caribbean Futures” and curated by Monica Marin — shows how Virgin Islands painters connect landscape to deeper historical currents. The exhibition runs through October, with hours Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Featured artists include Adrian Edwards, Danielle Kearns, Lucien Downes, and others whose work draws on dance, masquerade, storytelling, and architecture alongside visual art. The setting matters: Fort Frederik is where the 1848 uprising that ended slavery in the Danish West Indies began, a site where landscape and history are inseparable.
For visitors who want to see BVI landscape painting in context, the Rondell Smith Exhibition offers a concentrated look at one artist’s vision. Smith’s work tends to foreground the interaction of sea and shore — a recurring concern for island painters who must reckon with the fact that the landscape is never entirely stable.
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What remains unresolved in BVI painting is the question of whether “landscape” should include the built environment and the historical traces of sugar mills, plantations, and forts. Some painters include these elements; others deliberately exclude them, creating a tension between landscape as nature and landscape as lived history. That debate is unlikely to settle.
Looking closer at CreativeWaves BVI reframed the whole question. This organization functions as a catalyst for cultural renewal, hosting Sip & Paint evenings and Digital Drawing workshops for teens and adults, and launching a Digital Drawing Competition in collaboration with DLTSolutions. It’s not a gallery — it’s a community infrastructure for making art.
Wood Carving: The Islands in Grain and Form
Wood carving in the BVI has roots in boat-building — a tradition that treats wood not as a surface to paint but as a material with its own grain, density, and history. Carvers working in local hardwoods, mahogany, and driftwood produce sculptures of sea life, island forms, and waves. The Long Bush Crafternoon, organized by CreativeWaves, is one of the few regular events where carvers demonstrate their work and sell pieces directly.
The craft remains underdocumented compared to painting. No single exhibition catalogues BVI wood carving comprehensively, and many carvers work independently, selling at markets and craft fairs rather than through galleries. The BVI’s maritime heritage — the subject of Sailing Through Time: Maritime Heritage and Modern BVI Life — directly informs the forms carvers choose: boats, fish, waves, and anchors are recurring motifs. The connection between the material (wood from island trees) and the subject (island life) is unusually direct.
At the Long Bush Crafternoon, you can watch carvers work and purchase pieces directly. Arrive early — the best pieces sell quickly. Cash is preferred, and prices are negotiable but not expected to be haggled sharply. Ask carvers about the wood species they use; most enjoy explaining where the material comes from and how it shapes the final piece.
Walls as Canvases: Public Murals and Community Art
Public murals in the BVI turn the landscape into a shared visual resource. The Jost Van Dyke mural, commissioned by CreativeWaves in partnership with the BVI Ports Authority, depicts the island’s coastline and harbor in a style that emphasizes movement and color. The Wheatley Wall mural, painted by Simond Llewellyn, anchors a public space on Tortola with an image that combines sea, sky, and abstracted island forms.
These murals serve a different function than gallery paintings. They are not for sale; they are not portable. They belong to the places where they are painted, and they change how those places feel. A wall that was blank becomes a landmark. A public square becomes a destination. The murals also weather — sun, salt air, and rain affect them, and they require maintenance. This ephemerality is part of the point: the landscape they depict is itself subject to erosion, storm, and change.
The BVI’s fort heritage — explored in Exploring the Cultural Heritage of Forts in the British Virgin Islands — provides a historical parallel. Forts were built to control views of the sea and coastline; murals, in a different way, also manage how people see the landscape. Both are interventions in the visual field, though with very different intentions.
A common outsider assumption is that BVI public murals are primarily for tourists. In fact, most murals are commissioned by local organizations and oriented toward residents. They reference local landmarks, community events, and cultural figures that may not be legible to visitors. Treat them as expressions of community identity, not as photo backdrops. If you photograph a mural, consider whether you know what it depicts — and if you don’t, ask someone who does.
Art in Motion: Festivals and Living Landscape
Festival arts in the BVI treat the landscape not as a subject to be represented but as a stage. The Performing Arts Festival, organized by CreativeWaves, transforms public spaces into venues for music, dance, and theatre. The Pick + Paint event at Full Belly Farm combines art-making with the agricultural landscape, inviting participants to paint in the fields. The Long Bush Crafternoon, mentioned earlier, blends craft demonstration with the outdoor setting of a bushland site.
What distinguishes festival arts from the other media in this article is their temporariness. A painting lasts; a mural weathers slowly; a festival performance happens once, then is gone. This ephemeral quality is not a limitation — it is a deliberate choice, one that aligns with how the landscape itself changes seasonally. The BVI landscape is not a fixed backdrop; it shifts with tides, storms, and light. Festival arts mirror that impermanence.
The connection between performance and landscape is still debated among practitioners. Some argue that the festival stage should be a neutral space, distinct from the natural environment. Others insist that the landscape is the only appropriate stage for BVI arts — that the islands themselves are the context that gives the work meaning. This disagreement animates festival programming and is unlikely to resolve.
Context and Comparison: How Media Shape Landscape Perception
The following table compares how each medium treats the landscape differently — not ranking them, but clarifying what each one does best.
| Medium | Relationship to Landscape | Time Signature | Primary Audience |
|---|---|---|---|
| Painting | Interpretive, selective — the artist chooses what to include | Hours to days per work | Gallery visitors, collectors |
| Wood Carving | Materially connected — the wood comes from the landscape | Days to weeks per piece | Craft fair attendees, market shoppers |
| Public Mural | Site-specific, fixed — the landscape is the wall itself | Days to weeks to create; years to weather | Neighborhood residents, passersby |
| Festival Arts | Ephemeral, embodied — the landscape is the stage | Hours per performance | Festival attendees, community |
- No single medium dominates BVI landscape art — painting, carving, murals, and festival arts each offer a distinct relationship to place.
- Wood carving is the most materially direct: the wood came from the island, and the subject is often the island’s sea life and forms.
- Public murals are the most publicly accessible but the least documented — many are unmarked and unlisted.
- Festival arts are the most ephemeral and the most tied to community calendar events, not visitor schedules.
CreativeWaves BVI, the organization behind many of the exhibitions, workshops, and festivals mentioned here, operates as a registered nonprofit. Its programs — including the Arts Clubs that have reached 350+ students — are funded through grants and donations, not ticket sales. This funding model shapes what kind of art gets made and who gets to see it. The organization’s website is creativewavesbvi.com, and its Instagram account is @creativewavesbvi.
Questions Readers Ask
Can visitors buy original BVI landscape art?
Yes. Paintings and wood carvings are available at the Rondell Smith Exhibition, the Women’s Vision Exhibition, and the Long Bush Crafternoon. Prices vary widely. For wood carvings, expect to pay between $30 and $200 depending on size and detail. Cash is standard at craft fairs.
Is BVI landscape art only about the sea and beaches?
No, though seascapes dominate. Some artists focus on the interior landscape — hills, bushland, agricultural plots — and others include built structures like sugar mills, forts, and houses. The definition of “landscape” is itself contested among BVI artists, with no consensus on whether human structures belong in the category.
Where can I see BVI murals without a guide?
The Jost Van Dyke mural is on the island’s main harbor front, visible from the ferry dock. The Wheatley Wall mural is on Tortola, on the wall of a commercial building near the roundabout in Road Town. Both are outdoors and accessible year-round. No admission fee applies.
Do BVI artists work in digital media?
Yes. CreativeWaves runs Digital Drawing workshops for teens and adults, and launched a Digital Drawing Competition in collaboration with DLTSolutions. Digital art is a growing but still small segment of the BVI art scene. Most digital work focuses on portraiture and abstract composition rather than landscape.
Seeing the Islands Through the Art That Shapes Them
What the BVI’s landscape painters, wood carvers, muralists, and festival artists share is not a style or a medium but a conviction that the islands are worth sustained attention. Every piece of art — whether it hangs in a gallery, stands in a public square, or disappears after a single performance — is an argument for looking again at what is already there. The landscape does not speak for itself. Artists speak for it, and in doing so, they show us what we might otherwise miss. For a deeper look at how the BVI preserves its cultural identity across multiple forms of expression, Preserving Paradise: How BVI is Keeping Its Cultural Heritage Alive traces the broader efforts to sustain these traditions.
Sources and further reading
CreativeWaves BVI. “Home.” 🔗
St. Thomas Source. “Annual Emancipation Art Exhibition Opens at Fort Frederik Museum, Honoring Ancestral Legacy and Caribbean Futures.” July 2026. 🔗
BVI Luxury. “Art in the BVI: To the Champions of Creativity and Community.” 🔗
Related reading on IslandHopperGuides
From Sugar Mills to Sailboats: A BVI History Lesson — traces the historical transformations that shaped the landscape BVI artists depict today.
The Spiritual Significance of Sea Glass in the British Virgin Islands — explores how another found material carries landscape memory in the BVI.
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