Cayman Brac’s boundary-pushing artist Ronald ‘Foots’ Kynes, aged 72, died this 14 Aug. in his South Side home.
Kynes, known for his underwater art installation and dive site ‘Atlantis’, became an unlikely figure in a wider debate about expression and tolerance in Cayman. His 2017 arrest over sculptures depicting nudity and same-sex intimacy put the islands’ obscenity laws to the test.
In the lead up to his eventual acquittal, Kynes contended, “My art is love,” standing in defence of the sculptures that provoked and angered many Cayman Brac residents.
Despite repeated instances of vandalism to his art, Kynes was known for keeping his doors unlocked and welcoming visitors into his home, which had evolved into a tourist site of its own.
Artist Marc Laurenson, who helped care for Kynes through his final years of illness with Marfan syndrome, recalled a common refrain from the artist: “God looks out for fools, drunks and Foots.”
Laurenson described Kynes as a frugal man who enjoyed Wendy’s chili and his own, homemade moonshine. Even as Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder that weakens connective tissues, caused Kynes severe pain, Laurenson said he remained “sharp as a tack”.
In his final years, much of the artist’s work turned dark, including a Grim Reaper statue installed atop his roof, a wall filled with cast skulls and characters drawn from mythology and heavy-metal iconography.
The imagery served as a cheap security system, Laurenson joked, to keep away superstitious Brackers, while drawing in curious tourists.
How he described the work mattered to him. Laurenson remembers Kynes insisting that, “My art is my thoughts, feelings and emotions.”
His custom-built South Side home featured extensive, open-air displays of his sculptures and etchings. His signature lighthouse, deemed the ‘stairway to heaven’, paid tribute, Laurenson said, to Greek mythology and the lighthouse of Alexandria.
For all the darkness and controversy of his art, those who knew Kynes describe a generous and funny man. He would often arrive in Grand Cayman bearing carved boards and shell jewellery as gifts or donations. Laurenson recalled, on one occasion, Kynes turning up with a suitcase of live soldier crabs—a present that had to be rehomed at a local sanctuary.
Kynes was born in Munich in 1953, the son of a serviceman posted to Germany, Laurenson said. The family later moved through Egypt and Madagascar before settling in Alabama. Kynes relocated in the 1980s to Cayman Brac, where he would remain until his death.
As his illness progressed, he travelled frequently to Grand Cayman for medical care. Laurenson and his family became important, steadfast figures in his life, offering companionship and care.
He was, by Laurenson’s account, a man who felt his work was never formally recognised in the place he made his home, even as it quietly drew visitors to the Brac for decades.
While Kynes rarely showed his work in gallery settings, instead preferring to treat his home as his personal gallery, he collaborated with Laurenson in the most recent Biennial, ‘Archipelago’, at the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands. The installation, playing off of the Cayman Islands coat of arms, displayed a turtle fashioned after Kynes’ image, framed by boards from his home and the artist’s common refrain: “My art is my thoughts, feelings and emotions.”
Laurenson is working on organising a memorial for Kynes, likely on what would have been his birthday, 5 Sept.
