Some time after visiting San Ignacio, in the Cayo District, Belize in April 2025 a social media post came up for Reyna Gallery featuring artist Fernando Reyna. The post presented a ceremony involving an ornate lovingly built altar and art honoring Mayan culture and representing the Xunantunich Mayan temple for the opening for the "Ku Pertricor" exhibit. The Gallery opened on February 1, 2025 in Downtown San Ignacio on West Street just across from Pop's restaurant where one of Fernando Reyna's murals is featured.
Several months later, on December 23, 2025, we stepped into the Reyna Gallery greeted by a 90 × 120 cm hummingbird mid-flight in the most vibrant palette and a towering 2 meters Fernando who was in the process of adding the finishing touches for the gallery and cafe reopening post-renovation. An impromptu private tour ensued after reaching out to his wife and business partner, Janet Reyna as a busy season approached. The 3-room 2-story gallery also features an elegant and welcoming cafe and wine bar. There were no words adequate enough to describe his gorgeously ethereal paintings and the depth of skill is clear from this Cuban artist who has an extensive background trained in art schools in Cuba.
From his paintings depicting Reggae legend Bob Marley with incredible accuracy and vibration, to his portraits of the 'Queen of Brukdown 'music from Punta Gorda, Leela Vernon, Fernando Reyna's sharp attention to detail and ability to capture the charisma of these icons spot-on is unrivaled. While he uses primarily oil paint on canvases for phenomenally rendered portraits including those of lauded local musicians and Prime Minister George Price, who won independence for Belize, to the Queen of England, he also experiments with other media including Mayan soil, cigar ink and wax.
Incorporated into his portraits of the Mayan women who make up the San Antonio Women's Cooperative, Fernando applies Mayan soil along with oil paint to connect the portraits to lands and culture the women come from. Since the women are part of the gallery's collective of artists, their beautiful pottery is also on exhibit on the ground floor of the gallery.
Reyna's series based on Mayan jade funerary masks combines a rich green wax, to represent the jade in these sacred masks, along with Mayan earth. In his publication for the exhibition Fernando mentions that these masks "made with jade tiles and other materials used in the burial of the Mayan rulers to ensure their journey and transformation to divinity in the underworld. The use of jade symbolized the breath of life, rebirth and sacred power and the mask represented the idealized face of the king [ruler]."
A truly moving portrait series is of an ambassador of Garifuna culture, Freda Sideroff, who holds a Garífuna cultural mask in her hands while tenderly pressing it against her cheek. There is a very similar work painted in black and white with the same mask painted in gold. Among the first of a new series, there is a new portrait Fernando painted of Frida Kahlo portrayed seductively sharing an eye with a hummingbird perched on her hand.
Fernando Reyna's Art Journey
Fernando Reyna Escalona was born in Cuba in 1985 in Bayamo, Granma, Cuba. He studied art at the Oswaldo Guayassamin Academy of Plastic Arts 2001–2005 and then moved on to continue his studies at the University of the Arts in Havana, Cuba, graduating in 2013.
When asked what inspired him to create art initially, as well as who inspired and supported him on the journey Fernando had this to say:
'Escuela era muy aburrida y me pasaba el tiempo rayando y dibujando para pasar el tiempo. Así fue mi pasión por dibujar cualquier cosa, dibujos animados de revistas o cualquier cosa que veía. Y ya de joven tuve varios profesores que ayudaron a mejorar mis dibujos y poder con 16 años comenzar mi carrera de Arte en una academia de arte en Bayamo mi ciudad natal en cuba. Mi primera pintura fue la copia de un paisaje africano que tenía mi abuela en la sala de su casa. Y eso mi inspiró a hacer una acuarela y tal vez fue mi punto de partida de niño. Ya este año 2026 cumplo 20 años de vida artística y de recorrer un largo camino de experiencia y motivaciones en el arte'
Translated:
"School was very boring, and I spent my time scribbling and drawing just to pass the time. That's how my passion for drawing anything began—cartoons from magazines or whatever I happened to see. When I was young, I had several teachers who helped me improve my drawings, and at the age of 16 I was able to begin my art career at an art academy in Bayamo, my hometown in Cuba. My first painting was a copy of an African landscape that my grandmother had in her living room. That inspired me to make a watercolor, and perhaps that was my starting point as a child.
This year, 2026, I mark 20 years of artistic life and of traveling a long path of experience and motivation in art."
Arriving in Belize 6 years ago, over 20 exhibitions and many murals later, Fernando Reyna renewed his motivations and began a new stage in his life as an immigrant and artist. Reyna is passionate about creating large-scale paintings and murals, and he is immersed every day in new projects.
Fernando had a vision of creating the Reyna Art Gallery that would serve as a space for an art collective for established and emerging artists and a hub of culture in the Cayo District celebrating the Maya, Garifuna and otherwise unique diversity of Belize. With a shared dream and tremendous amount of work, he and wife took over a partially abandoned one hundred-year-old building on West Street and transformed it into a truly unique gallery and cafe that redefines the fine art experience in Belize. We would later learn that the building was previously owned by another celebrated Garifuna cultural ambassador, Cynthia Ellis-Topsey. It seems perfectly fitting and somehow pre-destined that the gallery should exist in such a space now.
All of the art is for sale — don't hesitate to inquire when visiting the gallery.
Learn more about the San Antonio Women's Cooperative through this Belize Watch interview.
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