Like Minds
McCoy-Snell uses the genre of landscape painting to explore questions about time — who we are as physical beings in time and as spiritual beings out of time. She extends this notion to suggest that all life is cyclical: we are renewed and birthed many times. Inspired by the music of David Bowie, this work was created for the Native Sons’ 20th-anniversary exhibition at the National Gallery in 2016, when it was purchased for the collection.
About the Artist
Nickola McCoy-Snell
b. 1974
Born in Savannah, Grand Cayman, Nickola McCoy-Snell studied art at University College of the Cayman Islands. She rose to prominence in 2002, when she won the first McCoy Prize for Excellence in Caymanian Art. She also won CNCF’s Artistic Achievement Award in 2002 and the Honours and People’s Choice awards in The McCoy Prize in 2007. Her highly stylised paintings evoke the imagery and iconography of street art — running paint, epigrams and bolts that evoke vandalism and graffiti. A member of the Native Sons collective, McCoy-Snell has exhibited widely with the group, including See Me Ya (2007) and Native Sons’ Grass Piece (2008) at the Morgan Gallery, Grand Cayman. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the National Gallery and the Cayman Islands National Archive and has featured in the NGCI exhibitions Portrait of an Artist (2003), Emergence (2005), Native Sons’ Fahive (2005), A Day in the Life (2011), All Access (2015), Native Sons – Twenty Years On (2016), Cross Currents: 1st Cayman Islands Biennial (2019), and Tropical Visions (2019).
