The artist, Kristy Franco after deep prayer blows the breath of the Holy Spirit onto the piece, the heat binds gold leaf to clay. It’s a slow process of layering, until the halo shines like glass. 

The painting resembles artwork from the Byzantine Empire, a bygone era when the iconographer’s work was a window to the divine. Yet it was painted by a Trinidadian artist in the 2020s. “A part of me believes that I was made for this,” Franco says. “There is a hush that comes over everything when I start to paint.” 

For years, Franco wasn’t sure how to use her talents. Born in 1979, she grew up between Port of Spain and Balandra, where she’d sit for hours captivated by the ocean’s beauty and breadth. Her family was brimming with creatives — her grandfather: a musician, painter, sculptor and poet. Franco often stood beside her father’s keyboard as he practiced for performances with his band. Young Franco loved drawing and her parents encouraged the passion; she studied art at a Canadian university. Yet Franco doesn’t describe her artistic journey as the single-minded compulsion often associated with creative genius.