Jamaican-born Bryan McFarlane’s career, although based in Boston, continues to expand internationally. In 2016 McFarlane was part of an exhibition, Latin America and Caribbean Visual Art Exhibition, at the Beijing World Art Museum, and in 2017 he was included in the Jamaica Biennial at the National Gallery of Jamaica.

In 2008 solo shows of his paintings were mounted in Berlin and in Beijing, and he was among artists representing twenty-five countries in Beijing’s 2008 Olympics exhibition. In 2012, McFarlane was awarded the Musgrave Medal by the Institute of Jamaica in recognition of his achievement in art.

In 2013, McFarlane joined a team from MIT and the Schmidt Ocean Institute in exploring the depths of the ocean floor and, using the data that they collected, to project how the changes might affect climate change. Spending so much time looking and thinking about the ocean and atmosphere resulted in a series of large paintings that were exhibited in at Gallery NAGA in 2018.

McFarlane’s recent compositions are made up of stripes or bands of color, occasionally interrupted with a reference to landscape or architecture. The strokes of paint, masterfully mixed and lusciously applied, are colored stripes that connect to one another. Sometimes the stripes are so close in tone that they become indiscernible from each other. Sections of the paint drip and wiggle and the overall composition resembles ocean waves rolling in or rain pounding down. They are monotonous yet soothing and elemental all at the same time.