The Fantastical Images of BVI Artist Walden Benjamin
By Jane Bakewell
Caribbean landscapes, animals and peoples, come alive through the “fantastical” images of BVI artist, Walden Benjamin. After viewing his artwork at Nutmeg & Co. in Road Town, I sat down with the thirty-something young artist to get a better understanding of an art genre called “Magic Realism.”
Interestingly enough, Walden has never had formal art training in his background. Growing up on Tortola with a Dominican mother and Vincentian father, he recalls loving to draw as a child. The images that stirred his imagination at that time came in the form of classic comics like Batman and Spiderman, animated movies like Lion King and Hercules. Then there were the hours after school watching cartoon reruns from the ‘50s and ‘60s like Tom and Jerry, The Flintstones, Road Runner and Looney Tunes. “I loved watching those shows,” he laughed, “I later got hooked on video games like Super Mario.”
In high school, he was in introduced to Visual Arts and was fortunate to have some good mentors at the time, who helped hone his skills with ink pens, colored pencils and paint. After graduating, Walden volunteered to teach art to younger students in the after-school program at the Youth Empowerment Center (YEP) at Fat Hogs Bay, East End. It was during this time that people began to take an interest in his art as something the larger public might want to enjoy and even purchase. This eventually led to his first Art Show at Nutmeg & Co. in 2021.
Benjamin’s art fuses familiar landscapes often layered in dream-like fashion with enlarged creatures in an imaginative setting. A Caribbean man with a straw hat sits saddled on a huge iguana holding the reins while gazing out at the sea. Huge pocket watches lay scattered on a beach half-buried in the sand, a tree that bulges midway down the trunk in a round pregnant fashion suddenly sports a port hole window looking out. These surrealistic images evoke artists like Salvador Dali with his table-dripping pocket watches and MC Escher with his architectural images of cubist forms and stairways to nowhere.
Magic Realism is a respected art genre in the larger art world, often described as “fantastical images” depicted in a naturalistic manner combined with images of dream or fantasy.” Objects that our minds tell us belong in one place often appear as incongruous in their fantasy settings. Giant dice on a beach stacked in a gravity-defying manner, landscapes with creatures in both an overworld and under-world settings knit together in one image. As one art critic described his work in a review, “Everything unimaginable is suddenly comfortably imaginable.” What comes to my mind is “the reality of unreality.”
One often wonders what goes through an artist’s mind when he crafts his work. I posed this question to Walden and he paused for a moment and said, “I get my head in the clouds every now and then and ideas come to mind. I let it sit for a while and let it play out, then I put it on paper.” Magic Realism is an art form that defies logic and invites the viewer to step behind the “magic looking glass.” Images out of their natural space and time, and dimension draw you into a new reality. One ponders juxtaposition of objects, space and symbolic meanings. Possibly one even gets to fantasize along with the artist.
In some of Benjamin’s recent work the theme seems to be “superheroes.” Musclemen in poses or holding a globe with one arm stretched out. “I use these images” he explained, “to signify how you must feel inside to withstand challenges. The strong man as overcomer. “I use to be a lot heavier,” he confessed, “and now I am working out at the gym lifting weights.”
My final question to Walden concerned what message through his art was he hoping to convey. His answer was simple, honest and disarming. “For myself, I feel a sense of accomplishment when I finish a piece. For others, I leave it to them to interpret it for themselves, they all may perceive something very different.”
Walden Benjamin’s art can be viewed and purchased at Nutmeg & Co. on Waterfront Drive in Road Town, just down from then ferry dock. His work will also be featured in an upcoming art show in February 2026 at Creative Waves Gallery located at Road Reef Plaza, Tortola.
Walden’s Facebook page is:
https://www.facebook.com/Waldensocko
For the Facebook page for Nutmeg & Co go to:
