By Nadia Hall From Royal Gazette

When Orchid Lee moved to Bermuda from the Cayman Islands, she thought the transition would be easy. It wasn’t.

“I knew people here because I went to school with a lot of Bermudians. And because I’m also from a small island I thought the similarities would make it very easy for me to fit in, but I didn’t find that at all,” said Mrs Lee, a lawyer.

“It was a very challenging time for me.

“I found that the only similarity was that it’s a small island and everything else is very different to Cayman. I was thinking two, three years max. Beef up my résumé, go back to Cayman. That was what I wanted to do. “And then I met my husband.”

In the four-and-a-half years since, Mrs Lee has found her place. She and her husband have a one-year-old daughter, and she is working on yet another love — art.

An exhibit of her paintings is now on display at Muse restaurant under the title Journey.

“[Bermuda] is where my journey has taken me. This is my life story,” she said. “I like to paint based on what I’m going through or where I am in life; something I see or feel at the time. But I also like to experience how it speaks to other people.

“I’d been wanting to put something on canvas but as a very busy mother it’s very hard to find time to do anything, so I’m happy that [Muse] allowed me to do that by prompting this show.

“I’m glad I finally have it.”

Mrs Lee was born in Cayman and went to school in Canada and England. She started painting seriously as a teenager in Canada.

A Vancouver piece, New Beginnings, documents her first time away from home when “everything was new”.

One of her more recent, Lost in the Triangle, is based on the experiences she had during hurricanes Fay and Gonzalo.

Scarred by the devastating effects to her native Cayman after 2004’s Hurricane Ivan, she panicked.

“I felt that the attitude in Bermuda towards hurricanes was sort of like what our attitude used to be like in the Cayman Islands. It was this very nonchalant attitude and I recognised it because it was exactly what we were like before we had Hurricane Ivan that completely devastated our island.

“I truly believed that I was going to die [in Hurricane Ivan]. I don’t mean in a general sense, but in a literal sense,” she said. “That hurricane sat over us for two days. We were in a little room, hardly any air. We have what are called hurricane clamps that hold the roof down and we could hear the roof lifting up from the hurricane. You could hear that for hours and hours and the howling of the wind — I hate to say it, but that howling sounded like demons. I swear I never prayed so hard in my life.”

She said her inspiration comes from seeing others enjoy her work.

“I like when my paintings make people feel something when they look at them, whether it be emotions of joy, happiness or even sadness, it doesn’t matter.

“I think I’ve done what I am supposed to do as an artist if my painting speaks to the individual looking at it. Bob Marley said it best: ‘One good thing about music when it hits you feel no pain’. That’s what I want my paintings to do — to hit you. But in a good way, of course.”

Journey runs until August 5.

IMAGE: Find her place: Orchid Lee, who moved from Cayman to Bermuda four-and-a-half years ago, has an exhibition of her paintings on show now at Muse (Photograph by Nadia Hall)

For more on this story go to: http://www.royalgazette.com/lifestyle/article/20160713/life-is-journey-for-artist