Nature’s Embrace opens at Horizons

Horizons Art Gallery will host Nature’s Embrace, a joint exhibition featuring the works of Karen Hale Jackson and Alicia Nathai-Achong. United by a shared reverence for the natural world, both artists explore landscapes, memory, and emotion through vastly different mediums and approaches.

Hale Jackson last showed in 2022, and what was meant to be a short hiatus transformed into a two-year journey of personal growth, relocation, and artistic rediscovery. Now based in Tobago, she has embraced the island’s peace and tranquillity, drawing inspiration from the lush natural beauty of Trinidad and Tobago.

“I can't do a painting unless I feel it,” she said. “It all comes from the heart.”

Nathai-Achong's path to art was as unexpected as it was transformative. Four years ago, while scrolling through images on her phone, she discovered encaustic painting, an ancient medium using molten beeswax, damar resin, and pigment. It was a moment of magic that shifted her life away from a decades-long banking career and toward a deeply personal, multidisciplinary practice.

Today, she masterfully wields blowtorches, hot palettes, carving tools, and pigments to craft richly textured pieces that echo her rural upbringing in south Trinidad. Her work is layered, both physically and emotionally, blending wax with oils, inks, and shellacs to produce effects that feel both organic and otherworldly. “I’m a country girl at heart,” she said, “and nature has always been my grounding force.”

Nature’s Embrace opens on June 10, from 6:30 to 8 pm at Horizons Art Gallery, 37 Mucurapo Road, St James.

For more information, contact Horizons Art Gallery at 628-9769, 280-3058 or follow on Instagram and Facebook.