Meet Afro-Caribbean Portraitist Kandy G. Lopez, the Barkley L. Hendricks of Fiber Art

I first encountered Kandy G. Lopez’s larger-than-life fiber paintings at ACA Galleries’ booth at the 2024 Armory Show. As New York City’s Javits Center is not exactly known for its charming and distinctive ambience, I typically race through it, in search of art to cleanse my proverbial palate.

Exploding with style and personality, pattern and color (think neon orange bucket hats, leopard pants, and bug-eye specs), Lopez’s portraits of her diverse Miami community stopped me in my tracks, much in the way that the portraits of Barkley L. Hendricks—a major inspiration for the Afro-Caribbean artist—do.

As instantly arresting as Lopez’s portraits are from afar, the real magic happens when you’re up close, basking in the meticulously and fully hand-embroidered figures. The 38-year-old artist, who also works in prints, paint, and glass, has spent the last four years perfecting her fiber-based portraits, each of which typically takes a week or a week and a half to complete, if she’s in the studio six to eight hours a day. (In addition to being a practicing artist, Lopez is an associate professor in the Department of Communication, Media and Arts at Nova Southeastern University. She also has two young children.) 2025 has marked several milestones for the artist: she won the Orlando Museum of Art’s People’s Choice Award; was granted a residency with the Galleries of Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, where she will have a show in 2026; and she had her first international solo exhibition at the Florence Fondation in Paris.

This November in New York City, ACA Galleries opened “Textile Truths: Faces of Resilience” (through January 17, 2026), Lopez’s sprawling second solo exhibition with the gallery, where her technical prowess continues to impress. With each portrait, whether solo or group, bust or full-body, the photorealism from afar is stronger than the last, the close-up detail more astounding. It’s clear Lopez is growing more confident in her practice, as she experiments with adding three-dimensional touches like cowrie shells, playing with outlines and negative space to contrast heavily worked sections, and allowing the figures’ hair or shoes to venture beyond their rectangular grid—an effect that the artist likens to paint dripping. It’s as if Lopez is breaking the fourth-wall, asserting the figures’ agency in not only the daring outfits they wear but also their commanding poses. They proudly take up space.

Kandy G. Lopez, Poetic Justice, 2025. Yarn and acrylic on hook mesh.

Photo: Roman Dean, courtesy of the artist and ACA Galleries