From Jamaica to the Digital Canvas: Behind the Print with Acquille Dunkley

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Website: https://www.adunkleyportfolio.com/

For this edition of our Behind the Print blog series, we’re proud to feature the powerful and deeply imaginative work of Jamaican-born visual artist Acquille Dunkley. Drawing from his cultural roots, lived experiences, and a lifelong fascination with storytelling, Acquille creates art that blurs the line between memory, symbolism, and constructed reality.

Working from digitally built 3D environments and translating them into striking 2D compositions, he crafts scenes that feel both intimate and monumental. Quiet moments layered with emotional depth, cultural resonance, and carefully sculpted light. His work reflects the richness of the Caribbean experience while exploring universal themes of identity, introspection, and human connection.

Celebrated in national exhibitions across Jamaica and collected by admirers around the world, Acquille’s art invites viewers into spaces that are at once imagined and deeply familiar. We’re honored to help bring his visions to life in print and to share the story behind his creative process.

Q&A with Acquille Dunkley:

You have deep roots in Jamaica. How has your heritage, culture, or early environment influenced the way you see the world and the art you create today?

I’m not exaggerating when I say that in the central parts of Jamaica, almost every other street corner has a shop playing reggae music. It becomes the distant soundtrack to the daily rush of people moving

through their daily routines.

Growing up in Jamaica gifted me with countless memories of colorful experiences that I took for granted. It wasn’t until I left that I understood how blessed I was to come from a place like that. My artwork is my way of returning to those eventful days and visualizing the experiences I once had.

Your work often begins in three-dimensional space before being translated into a two-dimensional print. What draws you to that process, and how do you think it changes the way people experience your images?

I create digitally rendered three-dimensional scenes that depict cultural moments, places, and objects. This workflow lets me build hyper realistic scenes that look like photographs. Instead of keeping

these scenes confined to a screen, I turned to printmaking, and printing on metal with Artbeat Studios has elevated the work into immersive memories that people can actually feel.

The fidelity of the work when it’s printed is very close to what I see on my screen, and as someone practicing fine art, that’s a huge win when I decide to show the work in public spaces. By deliberately choosing to display the final images on metal without any framing or borders, I invite the viewer in rather than placing a barrier between them and the scene. I find that the raw edges and the foreshortened perspectives I render draw the viewer in even more.

Can you walk us through your creative workflow? From building or imagining a scene in 3D to deciding how it should live as a final 2D artwork?

It all starts with memories of Jamaica or recent experiences I encounter while traveling there. I document most of the ideas before they become reality. There are countless notebook entries all the way back from 2016 with artwork ideas that I still have not got to as yet.

Some of my newer works have been fragmented ideas for years and I patiently wait for a memory or an experience to happen that will finish that idea into a full story. Once that happens, the digital assembly becomes the quicker part — and by quick, I mean several days or even weeks of 3D modeling, texturing, lighting, and rendering everything manually with various three-dimensional software.

I have a background in photography and lighting plays a huge role in my work. It’s one of my main ingredients when it comes to mood and emotion. If the finalized idea is something I’m satisfied with, I may choose to print it for public display during art shows.

Are there specific themes, emotions, or ideas you find yourself returning to in your pieces? What drives those choices?

I always find myself returning to quiet moments. Whether it’s a dimly lit room with a warm corner light or a boat gently rocking by the waves, I’m drawn to human cognitive behaviors and the mundane experiences of daily life — those small moments we often overlook because of their familiarities.

What’s been the most meaningful or personally significant piece you’ve created so far, and what story sits behind it?

That would have to be the domino smash artwork. I named it Six Love, Bruk Table. The name refers to the six games you have to win in a row, and ‘bruk’ is the Jamaican Patois (Jamaican English Dialect)

version of ‘break’. The artwork shows the brute force from a domino player who just won 6 games in a row to close out the game.

Jamaicans and people from other Caribbean countries take dominoes very seriously and how we play is that you have to win 6 games in a row to be the ultimate winner. You can imagine how long these games take with the winner having mixed feelings of triumph, frustration, and relief that leads to serious, but hilarious slamming of dominoes.

It’s widely known that domino tables aren’t safe around Jamaicans. A previous president of Jamaica was gifted this artwork and it has been featured in the National Gallery of Jamaica as well.

Your work blends imagination and reality in a really distinctive way. How do you decide what elements to exaggerate, stylize, or transform when moving from concept to final artwork?

While in college, I learned the importance of symbolism in art history classes and how to achieve strong composition in photography. My artwork leans heavily into symbolism, often featuring a main object as

the focal point while everything else plays a supporting role to further the story of that central character.

Looking ahead, how do you see your art evolving? Are there new techniques, subjects, or directions - whether tied to your heritage, technology, or 3D exploration - that you’re excited to

pursue next?

I enjoy learning things that I am passionate about which makes me interested in always experimenting with new technology. I’m looking forward to printing larger scale artworks as well as animated visuals of

my art on large screens.

When it comes to printing your work, what qualities or finishes feel most important for preserving the depth and dimensionality of your art, and what led you to partner with Artbeat Studios for that part of the process?

When it comes to printing, I look for accurate color replication and a great dynamic range between highlights and shadows. Printing on metal continues to amaze me with how closely the results match the

digital image I prepare for printing.

As a practicing fine artist, ensuring that these metal prints are archival and long-lasting is essential, and I found that Artbeat Studios truly cares about the quality of the work they produce.

Having a team of people that carefully produces and packages up your artwork for shipping is a huge blessing. I have shipped several crates of prints internationally and the artwork inside has always arrived perfectly.