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Bernard Stanley Hoyes was born in Kingston, Jamaica. From the early age of nine his mother sold his woodcarvings and watercolors to visitors to the Tourist Board in Kingston to help maintain the household and support his creative efforts.
He took his first art class at the Junior Art Center at the Institute of Jamaica and continued his art education when he migrated to New York, to live with his father, attending evening classes at the Art Student League. There he matured as a painter and sculptor under the tutelage of established artists like Norman Lewis and Hughie Lee Smith. He received a Ford Foundation scholarship to study with professional artists in a Summer Arts program at Vermont Academy in Saxtons River, Vermont, and later, for two years to complete the program.
He has worked as a designer and lecturer and currently works full-time as an artist out of his studio in Los Angeles. He has exhibited extensively in the U.S. and Jamaica, and he has won a number of important commissions and awards.
Hoyes' work is heavily influenced by his Jamaican heritage and in particular the afro-christian revival cults still popular among some segments of the island's population. Infused with strong primary colors and painted intuitively, his work dramatically captures the mysticism and majesty of the religion. We are offered a bird's eye view of the spectacle of bodies caught in spirit possession, the ceremonial rituals and gestures - a rare anthropological treat.
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