While growing up in Nassau, Matthew Rahming remembers his house always being filled with beautiful, handmade things. His mother and the other women in the family would make bridesmaids dresses for weddings and flower arrangements for funerals. “The men were equally as creative and hands-on,” Rahming says. One of his uncles builds drums from scratch, using animal skins as the drumhead. “He always carries at least one drum in the backseat of his truck, ready to go.”

Rahming’s paintings have an abstract expressionist style, with a focus on the line and mark. But they also contain figures and forms firmly rooted in place. With an intuitive, controlled chaos, Rahming’s portraiture, often of humans and dogs, is charged with the spirit of a quick sketch. Working on canvas and cardboard—recently a focused palette of black, white, and red—Rahming is inspired by Bahamian painters like Amos Ferguson and Kendall Hanna, and Americans like Basquiat, Barkley Hendricks, and Purvis Young. He’s also a fan of Louis Bourgeois. “One of my favorite things about her work is this ability to create this incredibly delicate line that can cut you in half.”

Rahming’s lines deliver similar intensity. While at Fountainhead, he started working in color again. He worked on a new painting of a dog, a recurring figure in his work, which he sees as a metaphor for the self. Potcakes, a breed found throughout the Caribbean, are especially prevalent in Nassau. Thousands of strays move across the island, and often have multiple caretakers. “There’s this idea that you can’t really be a stray because you have all of these homes,” Rahming reflects. “But in another way, it’s like you’re not a stray at all, because it’s your function to roam.”