ARTIST Joy Reyes

Joy Reyes is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist who uses spirituality, religious ideals, and her Jewish/Mexican culture throughout her artwork. She often intertwines these consistent themes together through the use of subtle symbolism, vibrant contrasting colors, and mixed textures. Inspired by her vastly different cultures and life experiences, Reyes creates to invoke others to look beneath the surface, to find a connection to their own life through her art.

“The Garden Where I Grow”, is a retelling of a story that plays closely to Reyes and many individuals’ lives. Finding yourself, after being lost. The tale of growing from a garden that nurtures you into maturity and leading yourself on the path of rediscovering who you are by looking through your past and finding the roots that take you back to the garden that raised you.

The series of paintings explore Reyes’s identity with her culture and family history. She is displaying the intimate moments of her Abeulita and her Mother’s life that have similar parallels to her life experiences now. She discovers who she is with a possible blossoming future within her and the generation to come from the seeds she has been planting by looking inwards.

The narrative Reyes is creating expands through her visual storytelling supported by the use of her painting family pictures to convey these memories. Emphasizing core moments in time that highlight where the thriving of her family and individuality’s inner garden was rooted and nurtured. The beauty of taking root in new love, venturing through obstacles alone, and finding the promise of a beautiful place that carries hope and healing. Nurturing that love into a whole generation of women down the lineage that aspire to choose themselves in the same brave way her ancestors did before her. The healing and discovery of generational trauma inspired the generational healing of individual choices. “The garden where I grow ” is a discovery of hope for a fulfilling future by examining one’s past from the roots up. Looking through the lens of Reyes’ take on family, religion, and personal experiences that generations have shared before her in a unified aspect creates a soft visual of a safe garden where a future is possible and healing is actively occurring together.