Captain Grey Beard | Guillo Pérez 3 | Original Oil Painting

Original oil painting by Guillo Pérez 3 · 48 × 72 in · Naval history painting · Large format maritime oil painting · Available at Marcolina’s Fine Arts Gallery, Tampa, Florida · Ships worldwide

The age of sail was one of the most consequential periods in human history. The routes that naval explorers and commanders opened, across the Atlantic, through the Caribbean, around the Cape, changed the world permanently. They connected civilizations, created empires, and forced encounters that shaped everything that came after.

Guillo Pérez 3 has spent years studying naval history and the age of exploration. As a Caribbean-born artist, that history is not distant from him. It is deeply personal. The ships that crossed those waters carried the people and forces that formed his world. He paints them with the complexity they deserve: neither romanticized nor reduced, but understood in full.

Captain Grey Beard is not a portrait of a specific historical figure. It is a portrait of a type: the naval commander who has lived long enough on the water to carry the sea in his face, who has led men through conflict and uncertainty and knows exactly what he is capable of. The grey beard is not age. It is experience made visible.

At 48 by 72 inches, this is one of the largest and most technically demanding works in the collection. Every mark carries the weight of everything this man has crossed and survived.

Collector's Note

Captain Grey Beard is the most physically commanding work currently available at Marcolina's. At 48 by 72 inches it requires a serious wall and rewards one. For collectors building a collection with anchor pieces, this is a defining acquisition in that category. The naval subject matter also makes it a strong fit for corporate placement in law firms, financial institutions, and executive offices where authority and gravitas matter.

Acquisition

Available through Marcolina's Fine Arts Gallery with worldwide shipping, full insurance, and professional art packaging. Payment plans available. Private viewings by appointment in Tampa, Florida. Virtual viewings available for collectors anywhere in the world. Contact us to inquire. New to collecting? Read our collector guide →

A standard shipping rate is charged at checkout. Once your work is packed, we calculate the actual shipping cost for its size and destination. If there is a difference, we will follow up to either invoice the additional amount or refund the difference, whichever applies.

About the Artist

Guillo Pérez 3 is a Dominican-American painter, co-founder, educator, and cultural ambassador whose artwork and vision help define the identity of Marcolina’s Fine Arts Gallery. Born in Santo Domingo and raised in Queens, New York, he is the grandson of Maestro Guillo Pérez, one of the Dominican Republic’s most respected painters and a recognized figure in the U.S. State Department’s Art in Embassies program, and the son of master painter Willy Pérez. Three generations of unbroken serious painterly practice. His work hangs in the permanent collection of the Skylands Museum of Art alongside Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso, and is held by private collectors in over 48 countries.

Guillo has painted with severely limited vision since childhood. Like Monet, who painted his Water Lilies series while losing his sight, and Matisse, who created his most celebrated works when illness took him away from the canvas, Guillo’s relationship with sight has become the source of something extraordinary rather than a constraint. Unable to rely on conventional vision, he paints from a place of total interior conviction: from historical knowledge, spiritual formation, and a bodily intelligence built over decades of serious practice. Every mark is a commitment. Every color choice is an act of faith. When he paints, that is when he is seeing.

He grew up in a deeply religious Christian household and has spent a lifetime in serious study of world history, comparative religion, and international affairs. His paintings are not decorative mythologies. They are the work of a man who has read the texts, lived the contradictions, and paints from the inside of those traditions.

In Tampa, he was mentored by the late Theo Wujcik, longtime USF Graphicstudio director whose work is held in the Tampa Museum of Art’s permanent collection. In 2022, The Straz Center commissioned him for a mural connected to their production of The Little Match Girl, and during the interview their team described him simply as art royalty.

Working from Tampa, Florida, he has developed Bauhaus Budō: a synthesis of Bauhaus design discipline and the meditative rigor of martial arts. His work has been exhibited across the United States, the Caribbean, and Europe. The New York Times recognized him as a “Star Maker.”

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