Each month, Caribbean Queen at the Palm Beach Plaza Mall honors one local female artist who lives and creates here. The Caribbean Queen program was launched when the store opened in late 2011, and has been running successfully ever since.
For the month of July 2016, local artist Diana Hopman is the boutique’s celebrated Caribbean Queen, showcasing her charming artwork.
Born in the Netherlands, Diana Hopman, wife and mother of two, has been living and working on Aruba since 1991. Her passion for painting started a bit later, in 1999, at an oil painting workshop in Scottsdale, Arizona, while she was temporarily living in the U.S. After a couple of years, she tried acrylic painting and hasn’t stopped since, painting on canvas, wooden boxes, driftwood, and paper collages. Although painting is her first love, she also likes making glass beads, mosaics, pottery, and ceramics.
Diana has shown a keen interest in travel since early childhood, and this curiosity has spilled over into geography, history, and maps of any kind, especially maps of foreign countries. This interest, combined with her desire to recycle, brought her to this current project, where she combines and repurposes old maps, encyclopedias, and travel magazines as backdrops for her paintings.
Her favorite subjects are diverse and varied but are always infused with the bright and cheery island-life feel. Her surfing, snorkeling, and scuba diving kids are also a source of inspiration, but that’s not all. From pineapples and palm trees to cutlery, turtles, and other sea creatures, her body of work is filled with island elements and will bring an authentic vibe into your home.
Caribbean Queen earmarks a percentage of all sales for its Tikkun Olam (Repair of the World) program. The collected funds are given quarterly to local not-for-profit organizations in an ongoing effort to serve the community. All the foundations served with donations from Caribbean Queen are dedicated to the promotion of art and artisan education on the island.
Enjoy unique paintings by Diana Hopman throughout the month of July, and drop in to witness a live demonstration of her craft at the boutique on the third Thursday of the month in the evening hours.