I’m excited to share my newest body of work: Spandrel Spaces – The Art of In-Between. This series is a culmination of a lifetime spent listening closely to nature’s hidden rhythms—underwater, in the rainforest, and in the quiet corners of the mind. It’s also a celebration of the overlooked: the architectural spandrel, the space between […]
Announcing My Upcoming Exhibition I’m thrilled to announce that my first exhibition of 2025, Spandrel Spaces: The Art of In-between, will open this May at the Museo de Arte e Historia Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos in Patillas, Puerto Rico. This exhibition brings together over 30 of my recent paintings—created throughout 2024 and into 2025—all of […]
Review by Miklos Legrady, Toronto editor for the New Art Examiner, U.K. Edited by Gabor Podor 3T Vakil ‘ Eyes On The Rainforest’ Science and Art in Puerto Rico. Artist and scientist. Thrity (3T) Vakil, FLS (1), says her life in Puerto Rico’s rainforest became a reality following a three-year coral-reef research expedition as a […]
The story of the Mahogany wood frames. Each of my paintings in Spandrel Spaces: The Art of In-between is being framed in genuine mahogany wood, salvaged from trees that fell in urban areas during Hurricane Maria. These weren’t forest trees but street trees—once lining neighborhoods, plazas, and avenues across Puerto Rico. When the storm brought […]
I’m thrilled to share a new series of photographs by the incredibly talented Raúl Quiñones-Rosado, featuring me alongside my latest collection, Spandrel Spaces, captured here at my home, Eye on the Rainforest, Patillas, Puerto Rico. As many of you know, my art is inseparable from the natural world. This collection continues that thread, exploring the […]
I have always been an intrepid explorer of the natural world. My travels have taken me across much of Europe, India, Nepal, East and North Africa, and North America. My painting and digital work have documented my travels and life. I was born in the 1960s to Zoroastrian parents in Nairobi, Kenya, East Africa, and […]
Vespertine cryptica, Acrylic Paint on PVC Panel, 44” x 20” In the architectural world, a spandrel is the byproduct of necessity and design—a space inadvertently created by the erection of arches and the demands of structure. In my latest collection of paintings, “Spandrel Spaces: The Art of In-Between,” I delve into these unintentional creations, residual […]
Ah, the perennial question that has haunted me since I could remember: “Where are you from?” It’s a seemingly innocuous inquiry, innocently tossed into conversations like a gentle grenade, waiting to explode into a hot mess of confusion and awkwardness, which I always experienced as a child. Picture this: Nairobi, Kenya, a bustling city of vibrant […]
Artist – Thrity (3t) Vakil Thrity Vakil’s journey into the world of art wasn’t paved with traditional influences or a strong familial push towards creativity. “I didn’t really grow up in an environment that highly valued art or writing,” she recalls. While her mother was an avid reader who encouraged a love for books, the […]
In an era marked by global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and habitat degradation, the conservation of endangered endemic plants has become a pressing concern. Eye on the Rainforest, an organization in Puerto Rico, has joined forces with Botanical Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) to address this issue. Their collaborative efforts are focused on […]
In the natural world, complexity often masquerades as simplicity, with the visible only hinting at the vast unseen. Synapse, spandrels, stoma, symbiosis and systems of sentience explode. The exhibition comes out of my immersion in the intricate tapestry of biological systems through the lenses of science, ecology, philosophy, and altered states of consciousness. With focused […]
Pyrocanthus flammeus, 3t Vakil, 2024, Acrylic Paint on Panel, 44” x 20” In the spaces between light and shadow, chaos and order, and the seen and unseen, my art emerges as a visceral dialogue with the natural and metaphysical worlds. As an artist, scientist, and conservationist, my practice transcends traditional boundaries, weaving together a tapestry […]
When you pledge to attend (anything), it seems like a very simple act, but spider-like you create an invisible thread that binds you, the promisor, with the promisee, in a dance of expectation and disappointment. The impact of breaking this thread is tangible. This happened today. The expectation of a much-anticipated meeting at the start […]
‘Everything Everywhere All Over All At Once’. Color pencil on paper Drawing has been more than just a hobby for as long as I can remember; it has been an integral aspect of my identity, a communication between my inner world and the world around me. While other people find consolation in music, literature, or […]
Thorns & Trails As a child, I was cradled in the emerald embrace of my aunt’s garden in Nairobi, Kenya. The ‘shamba’ was a playground of foliage, dazzling me with many plants in all sizes of recycled containers, pots, barrels, and cans. The air was a perfumed melody of floral scents, underscored by the sound […]
Part 1: Einstein’s paper on special relativity, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” was published in 1905, and it included the theory that time IS NOT a constant flowing stream but a kind of web that can expand and contract relative to the moment. In theory, we all move in our own time. But how […]
As I immerse myself in the wilderness of the Puertorican subtropical wet forest, I am acutely aware of the multifaceted nature of my role. Today, as I battled with levels of bureaucracy of Puertorican agencies, yearning to walk away from my desk and into the nursery, I engaged in a reflective exploration, endeavoring to define […]
The vibrant dawn of another day unfurls in the heart of the Puerto Rican rainforest, my adopted home for the past 23 years. My life is like a river coursing through this forest, through dense groves of cultural complexity, and cascades of ecological nuance; a dance on the colorful palette of existence within this subtropical […]
News from our rainforest mountain biome in southeast Puerto Rico. As an inhabitant of Puerto Rico’s lush rainforest for the last twenty-two years, I am witnessing a devastating phenomenon firsthand – the severe decline of insect populations in our forest. I have not done a scientific study on this, but I live here. I feel […]
A Tribute to Dr. Frank H. Wadsworth: His Vision Continues to Inspire When I first arrived in Puerto Rico in 1999 and began living in the mountain forests of a project known as Las Casas de la Selva, launched in the early 1980s by the Institute of Ecotechnics (IE), I had no notion of what […]
In September of 2022, Hurricane Fiona crashed onto the shores of southern Puerto Rico, unleashing a deluge of water that left the land ravaged and transformed. The rains were a relentless assault, causing giant landslides, and ripping a vital bridge from its banks, severing our access to the forest. The river’s blood-red boundaries stretched out […]
In progress in Mahogany hardwood. Species: Swietenia macrophylla x mahagoni
Various drawings underway on paper.
Draw and write
Details of a drawing in pen and ink on paper
Dreamscape
Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico as a Category 4 storm on the morning of September 20, 2017, bringing winds of about 160 mph to an island that had narrowly escaped the worst of Hurricane Irma’s destruction just weeks earlier. Our project, Tropic Ventures Sustainable Forestry and Rainforest Enrichment Project, established 35 years ago […]
On 21st September, we joined forces with neighbors from Mira Flores, Patillas, and we worked our way down the 184, clearing the road of tree debris, electric lines, and flagging dangerous low hanging lines.
Aedes aegypti : an innocent mosquito being blamed for ‘head-shrinking‘.
Fusión Isleña, now showing 3t’s drawtings: L-R on the wall: Eye On The Rainforest # 54 “Far Out And Far Away” 4′ x 2.5′ (48″ x 30″) Medium: Acrylic on Canvas ©August 2014 Patillas, Puerto Rico Price: $2,500 Eye On The Rainforest # 55 “Dangerous and Dramatic Cosmos” 4′ x 3′ (48″ x 36″) Medium: […]
Living in the middle of vast oceans of the biosphere.
