Vanessa Paulina presents the inner goddesses, who make the sun come up at night

Last Friday, the tree just outside the Museum Historico Aruba, played host to a modest happy hour VRIJMIBO, Vrijdag MIddag Borrel, given by the museum and made possible by generous sponsors such as Romar Trading, the Aruba Chamber of Commerce and High Performance.

The guest of honor, local artist Vanessa Paulina is well known in our community for her very cute and life-like paintings of her siblings and cousins as kids, growing up in San Nicholas, playing in the dirt in the front yard, with the chicken, barefoot and happy. The paintings, part of Vanessa’s Childhood Memory series, and another series, Indigo Kids, depicting the same subject matter in monotone, blue, endeared Vanessa to her island community, and shaped her signature style which is both naïve and sophisticated at the same time.

She then went to a darker place and presented us with the Schizophrenic series, depicting the dualities of her own personality, the dark side and the bright side, the hurt and the healing, actually slicing her  canvases in two and stitching them back together, showing the scars. The paintings are deep and layered and are filled with symbolism drawn from ancestral sources, from Indian, black and white mythologies.

In the space in between collections, Vanessa explored her Caribbean heritage and created the famous Virginia, a brave, beautiful, rebellious and tragic Aruban slave, whose life story represents the struggle of Caribbean women over the ages.

Vanessa is quick to give her time to youth art projects and murals in the public domain and as of recently to a series of art courses, Soul Art, in which she showed her students that when they “connect with their spirits, they connect with their genius.”

Her latest works presented under the tree and against the historic walls of Fort Zoutman explored her inner goddesses, so far just four of them, as she searches her different incarnations through the ages, and the different roles she played in the universe, starting with her Egyptian self, her arch angel self and her island princess self. True to her original love to fabrics and colors, she even painted her own gown for the VRIJMIBO, and put on display some of her favorite books, crystals, earth samples, souvenirs from her childhood, her tarot cards, and the best compliment she ever received, framed, “You Make the Sun Come Up at Night.”

VRIJMIBO is a monthly recurring afternoon drink event hosted at Museum Fort Zoutman, and organized by Joase-Ann van der Biest, Manager, Museo Historico Arubano.  Every last Friday of the month, this gathering brings together entrepreneurs and the art/cultural world. Starting at 5:00pm, you can meet and network with other business professionals, share ideas with other startups, and exchange views with established entrepreneurs.

Related links:

http://www.arubaluxuryliving.com/#!vanessa-paulina/gi7k5

http://www.vanessapaulina.com/?cat=10

 

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February 06, 2016
Rona Coster