From above, Cayman shifts. The shoreline fractures into colour and movement, swimmers scatter into patterns of pink caps and long limbs, and the sea, so often flattened into postcard blues, becomes a dynamic stage, alive with shifting hues. It is from this aerial vantage point that Jo Austin has begun to reimagine the island she has always called home.

Her now-recognisable aerial paintings did not begin in a flash of inspiration, but with a slow-burning idea that had lingered in her head for the better part of a year. “I’ve usually got at least four fully formed projects circling around up there, just waiting for the perfect opportunity,” she says.

The opportunity to act on the idea came when she pitched painting the Flowers Sea Swim from above to a couple commissioning a large-scale piece. From there, her idea took flight, along with her newly purchased drone. From above,  she found a way of seeing that would shape what came next.

This delicate balance of instinct and curiosity has long defined Austin’s approach to creating. Raised in Cayman, creativity was never something she chose so much as something that was simply always present. “I’ve started to understand how my entire life of drawing and doodling and making has led me to today’s confidence in what I can do,” she reflects. “Looking back, it’s really just been a lifetime of practice.”

Austin’s childhood memories surface in fragments: a Pirates Week drawing competition victory, hand-painted plates sold at craft fairs and a mural painted at the National Trust office as a teenager. Small moments, perhaps, but each one part of a steady accumulation of identity that has led to the artist she is today.

“Art has been a constant in my life,” she adds. “It’s not so much something I love doing as something I have to do. It keeps me sane and constantly thrills me.”

This driving instinct to create led her to the Edinburgh College of Art, where she spent her early years exploring and moving between disciplines before settling on illustration. But, like many artists, she wrestled with the idea of finding a distinct style.

“It felt elusive at the time,” she recalls.“As it turned out, I’ve had my style all along in my
drawing, I just didn’t really realise it until recently.”

Returning to Cayman brought renewed clarity. The island itself had not changed so much as her perspective had evolved. Where others might pass through a scene, Austin pauses, drawn not to grand vistas but to smaller, more human moments.

“People,” she answers simply when asked what catches her eye. “People just doing their thing. I find a drawing way more interesting with someone in it.”

That sensitivity to everyday life runs through much of her work, grounding her compositions in something lived rather than imagined. Even in her sweeping aerial pieces, where the lines between human and nature blur, a figure can often be spotted, a moment of presence within the wider scene.

For Austin, much of her process begins with observation. With her camera and drone, she searches for ‘treasures’ – compositions that hold energy and capture her excitement. “I love taking photos straight down,” she explains. “It’s a little more abstract and can be really dynamic.”

From there, images are cropped and revisited until one sparks a sense of urgency, and the painting begins. Hand-stretched canvases are layered first with a vivid magenta background that lends depth and vibrancy to the island tones laid above. Across mediums, that balance remains steady. Whether sketching passing scenes in pen and ink, layering oils to capture the glint of a silver thatch palm, or using acrylic to render a contrasting ‘walk of whelks’, she works steadily towards the moment when a composition settles, when colour, form and movement align.

Like many artists, her practice unfolds around the edges of daily life, when her son sleeps and the world quietens around her. Evenings, weekends and moments carved out between work and family. Still, in these quiet, stolen moments, the act of making brings pure satisfaction and contentment.

Beyond the canvas, her connection to Cayman’s art community is beginning to take clearer shape. Though she describes herself as not yet as involved as she’d like, exhibiting in the Cayman Islands Biennial felt like a step closer, one underscored by her being jointly awarded the Biennial’s highest honour, the Bendel Hydes Award, alongside Randy Chollette for her piece titled Streetview (2025).

This experience, beyond recognition and accolade, offered Austin a deeper sense of belonging to a community of artists whose work she has long admired.

In some ways, this sentiment feels familiar. Like the style she once struggled to define, her place within that community may have been there all along, only now coming into focus.

That growing sense of belonging sits alongside a Cayman that is changing in its own ways. The island Austin grew up on still exists, but now shares space with something busier, louder and more layered.

Her art is grounded in the present moment: “I think it’s important to recognise the empty beach scenes of the past are not the reality now – and will be even less so in the future. I count myself lucky that I grew up in a less busy Cayman and I count myself lucky that my son is growing up in what is still a wonderful place to live.”

Her work, like her perspective, doesn’t try to hold onto one version of Cayman over another. Instead, it reflects on the small moments directly in front of us: sometimes stillness, sometimes movement, sometimes both at once. Minute details, zoomed right in, or sweeping landscapes where people and nature move easily together. In Austin’s work, ways of seeing begin to shift. Cayman is neither fixed in the stillness of a pristine, packaged beach scene, nor weighed down by imposed meaning. Instead, it feels honest, clear-eyed and alive.

Looking ahead, she continues to build on this steady and instinctive way of working. New ideas are always in motion. Some are already taking shape through painting and drawing projects. Others remain, for now, in that familiar stage of quiet possibility.

For Austin, the way of seeing comes first. The art follows.