Ricard Nattoo and the Language of Blue Memory

Richard Nattoo is a Jamaican artist whose paintings exist between reality, folklore and spirituality. His work feels dreamlike, emotionally charged and deeply symbolic, drawing viewers into worlds where memory, myth and lived experience overlap.

At the core of his practice is storytelling. He describes himself as primarily a storyteller, someone who retells forgotten or repressed narratives shaped by Jamaican culture, Caribbean folklore and the wider effects of colonial history. Through a language of magical realism, he revisits these stories not as distant memory, but as something alive and evolving. In doing so, his work becomes an act of remembrance, where identity is continuously reconstructed through fragments of history, imagination and cultural inheritance.

River Mumma II. Watercolour, pen and ink, acrylic. Using water from the Salt River, Rio Grande and Benta River, Jamaica. Images courtesy of the artist.

This act of remembering is also an act of reclaiming. Nattoo’s paintings do not simply illustrate folklore. They reanimate it. They bring forward stories and symbolic figures that colonialism attempted to erase or diminish, placing them back into view with renewed presence and meaning. His work holds space for what was lost, suggesting that memory itself can be a form of resistance.

One of the most striking and recognisable aspects of his visual language is his use of blue. Blue appears across his figures like a second skin, something both physical and spiritual. It creates a sense of otherworldliness, positioning his subjects outside ordinary reality while still grounding them in emotional truth. The colour is not only aesthetic. It carries a deeply personal history for the artist.

Nattoo has spoken about how this choice began in childhood. While visiting the house where his father grew up, he saw a portrait of his grandfather. Although he was aware of his Indian heritage, seeing this image of his grandfather was a moment of shock, as the resemblance to himself felt unfamiliar. This experience led him to explore Hindu religious imagery, where he encountered divine figures depicted with blue skin. These images stayed with him, embedding themselves in his subconscious.

Later in life, when he began painting his own figures, this influence resurfaced naturally. He found himself drawn to rendering skin in blue tones rather than browns. Looking back, he understood this as a way of reconciling different parts of his identity. By depicting Black figures in blue, he presents them as majestic beings, echoing the divine representations that first captivated him as a child. In this sense, blue becomes a bridge between worlds, carrying ancestry, spirituality and selfhood within a single visual gesture.

Songs of the Ancestors. Watercolor, Pen and Ink using water from the Rio Grande River, Jamaica and Adom Waterfall, Ghana on canvas.  

There is also a material and philosophical dimension to this choice. Nattoo has spoken about the use of what he describes as Living Water in his process, where water itself becomes part of the painting’s memory. In his thinking, water holds memory, absorbing and carrying traces of experience. The blue, then, is not only symbolic of divinity or imagination, but also of memory itself. Fluid, layered and constantly moving.

This aligns with how his wider practice is understood. Profoundly influenced by Jamaican heritage and a close relationship with nature, Nattoo’s work explores identity, memory and spirituality through storytelling. It carries a dark yet magical quality, grounded in emotional honesty and shaped by a desire to connect personal experience with collective history. As one description of his work notes, he seeks to recover and reanimate stories that have been marginalised or erased by colonialism, offering them back as acts of cultural remembrance.

What makes his work especially powerful is this balance. He is not simply creating fantasy. He is reclaiming stories.

Richard Nattoo’s work ultimately reminds us that storytelling can also be preservation. A way of keeping memory, culture and history alive through image, symbol and feeling, allowing them to continue evolving rather than disappearing.

More of his work can be explored at richardnattoo.com