A prolific painter of people, places and pastimes, the British-born Caymanian artist has spent more than three decades capturing a multitude of Cayman subjects – both ordinary, everyday scenes and extraordinary, life-changing events. His quick sketches and broad, impressionistic brushstrokes record the evolving landscape and lifestyle of his adopted home.

Born in the coastal town of Southend, in Essex, England, Broad’s interest in art emerged at the age of eight or nine, he says, when he began to draw battle scenes inspired by his World War II comics. His innate talent earned him a place at Southend College of Art and later a scholarship at Edinburgh College of Art.

Broad also trained as an art teacher, which enabled him to travel. His first position was in the South Pacific islands of Vanuatu, where he remained for six years. Then, in 1989, the offer of a post teaching at John Gray High School landed him on the shores of Cayman. In the 34 years since he has taught high schoolers and middle schoolers at various establishments and shared his expertise through workshops at the National Gallery and Visual Arts Society while always making time for his own art.

Wherever he ventures, his sketchbook is a constant companion. Anything from a gardener at work to a man on his paddleboard is worth recording, because when artist’s block strikes, he will pore over old pencil drawings and previous paintings, never knowing what might serve as inspiration.

“I like to paint in series, exploring an image in various guises,” he says. His latest, the Roadmap Series, is featured in the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands exhibition 81° West – Cartographic Explorations in Contemporary Caymanian Art, which runs until February 2024. In this series, the artist uses current maps of Cayman as his canvas, and on to them paints figures, either imagined or lifted from historical photographs.

Implicit in these is the suggestion that the characters – the fisherman casting his hook, the lady in a sunhat, the man carrying a traditional woven basket on his back – lived in this area, perhaps long before those roads were built. The series contemplates the price of ‘progress’ that has all but erased a way of life and dramatically reshaped the landscape.

In his home studio, Broad paints accompanied by music, choosing calming classical melodies in the morning and taking a trip down memory lane with tunes from the 70s and 80s in the afternoons. Indeed, as time moves inexorably forward, he finds himself looking more and more to the past, and there is a nostalgia evident not only in the subjects he paints but also in the muted colour palettes he employs.

Whereas the paintings from his early years in Cayman were often recognisable for the vibrant colours he employed, his more recent work, primarily in watercolours, is much more subdued. Working with these limited colours, he achieves a melancholy effect reminiscent of the sepia-toned photographs of times past.

Had he not been an artist and teacher, Broad would have liked to be a musician. Perhaps this inspired his Musicians series, in the same muted tones, in which his loose brush strokes capture fiddlers, saxophonists, accordionists and more, fully immersed in their craft.

Painting in watercolours requires working fast and, therefore, on a small scale – he might complete a painting in a couple of hours – but he has also been experimenting with large-scale watercolours and has some life-size musicians on display in the Ritz-Carlton Art Gallery.

His largest work, however, is the Wall of History, commissioned as part of the Quincentennial celebrations in 2004. A mural composed of 500 hand-painted glazed tiles displayed alongside Heroes Square near the courthouse in George Town, the series of images illustrates the major milestones in Cayman’s history, from the discovery by Columbus and the later visit by Sir Francis Drake through the Wreck of the Ten Sails and the emancipation of slavery, to the growth of a modern-day tourism industry.

Beyond his teaching and personal artistic endeavours, Broad also leads what he terms a ‘secret life’ as a wedding painter. Equipped with paintbrushes and watercolours, he attends festivities and paints the event in progress, turning fleeting moments of celebration into timeless visual records.

Few artists create so prolifically, exploring mediums that range from acrylics, oils and pastels to installation art, or find inspiration in such a diversity of subjects. Whatever the subject of Broad’s paintings – whether people or places, boats or buildings, special occasions, or daily life – he excels at capturing motion and mood, light and shadow, rather than minute detail. Because every aspect of life is worth sketching or painting, and because he is compelled to do so often, his body of work uniquely chronicles the changes Cayman’s environment and culture have undergone in the past 30 years, creating an invaluable repository of memories for all of us.