Jamaican artist

Phillip Thomas

Phillip Thomas (b.1980) is a graduate of the Edna Manley College of Visual and Performing Arts where he gained both a certificate and diploma in Painting with honours (2003). He currently lives and studies in New York but continues to exhibit in Jamaica. In 2008 he won the Aaron Matalon Award for his outstanding contribution to that year's Jamaica National Biennial.

Phillip Thomas is considered a realist and he paints with an ease that demonstrates his sure draftsmanship and understanding of the human form. Yet there is more to his artistry than just representation. He harnesses the classical approach of the European masters to cloth and critique his contemporary black subjects. The result is portraits that are appealing because of their conventions and familiarity but also repulsive because of their perverse contradictory content. Black people become grotesque, deformed sitters manipulated by time and the artists facility to displace and reposition them in new historical settings. In The N Train (2008) his black subjects, huddle together as they make their way home. Like actors in an urban travesty they are depicted as medieval monsters, deformed, costumed, and burdened with the trappings of daily life. Through such stylised combinations of tradition and modernity, Thomas raises questions about race and identity and makes surreal judgments about the state of post-modern blackness today.

Kay Sullivan

Returning from her studies in Europe, Kay Sullivan’s sculptures came to prominence in the 1970’s at a time when public sculpture was in demand. Skilled in many different media such as resin, fiberglas and bronze, her understanding of the human form as well as her empathy for Jamaican subject matter made her a candidate for these commissions. At a time when the health of Jamaica’s pioneer sculptor Alvin Marriot was failing, Sullivan became an ideal choice for commissions.

Sullivan’s style is representational. Her ability to capture the likeness of her models brought her increasing success with a Jamaican public still wary of abstraction. In particular, the Sam Sharpe Monument (1983) commissioned for the city center of Montego Bay brought her great acclaim even as the more symbolic public monument honouring reggae singer Bob Marley was being rejected for its lack of realism. There is little controversial about Sullivan’s work, rather its strength resides in its traditional approach and truth to form and materials. But, her figures are far from passive, she captures mood and action through gesture and expression giving her work an engaging intimacy seldom found in formal statues. In particular her life size busts of colleagues and friends from the artists community shown in the exhibition The Self and the Other  (National Gallery of Jamaica, 1977) deftly communicated the character of her sitters with sensitivity and verve. The accuracy of these portraits made an important documentary statement even as they earned the respect of her peers. Sullivan lives and works in Jamaica and her work can be found in private collections as well as public parks locally.PA-S

Dawn Scott

Dawn Scott was an artist whose creative spirit knew no bounds, although she exhibited professionally, her art was not been confined to museums and galleries, instead her works can be found throughout all walks of life in restaurants, shops, offices and tourist resorts at home and abroad. Dawn Scott was at once a textile and installation artist, as well as a designer of home interiors, theatre sets and fashion.

A restless spirit, during the 1970s she refused to be pigeon-holed and began working in various media for personal satisfaction, exhibition as well as to make a living. Initially, it was her textiles that brought her public acclaim. Her deft handling of this wax resist technique and her ability to reproduce images that displayed her draftsmanship transformed this sometimes overlooked art form into fine art. Scott also brought a new regard to the notion of a local aesthetic. At a time when Jamaicans were being encouraged to ‘tun yu han mek fashion’ she was in the forefront of artists who were producing items locally that were wholly Jamaican in look and feel.

In the 1980s Dawn Scott was invited to participate in Six Options an exhibition of Installations mounted at the National Gallery of Jamaica. The art work that resulted A Cultural Object, (1985) became a disturbing icon for that decade and a centerpiece of the National Gallery’s permanent collection. Its interior mimics the lanes of Kingston’s derelict communities, replete with detritus, graffiti and the political posters and slogans that marred that era. At the heart of it there is a statement that points to the state of homelessness and hopelessness that is so much a part of Jamaica’s modern day experience. As described in the citation for her 1999 Musgrave Medal Award:“Hers is a humanist art in which the human figure takes central stage. Her social concerns are reflected in her dignified but graphic depictions of the life of the working class. This interest culminated in the mixed media installation “A Cultural Object’, a cleverly orchestrated recreation of the realities of inner city life in Kingston and one of the most powerful social statements ever made in Jamaican art.” 

The scale of Scott’s work would be established through this major work and during the 1990s she moved to even larger projects designing stage and film sets and designing interiors for offices, projects such as Noel Cowards Home ‘Firefly’ and even resorts such as Chris Blackwell’s Island Village in Ocho Rios and his numerous hotels throughout the Caribbean.Despite her range, Scott's work is consistent, stamped with a sense of individuality and creativity that is rooted in the Caribbean experience. Her commitment to a local aesthetic made her one of the most respected and sought after artists/designers in the region. Scott died in October 2010. PA-S

Oneika Russell

Born in 1980, Russell is a graduate of the Edna Manley College, Kingston Jamaica and Goldsmiths, University of London UK. Although based in  Kingston, as a recipient of a Commonwealth Scholarship she has traveled to Japan to pursue her interest in digital animation and film-making. Her career began as a painter, but her interest in comic characters soon led her to digital media and since graduating she has created a number of short films  that parody her own life and speak to the condition of women in the post-modern caribbean diaspora. Her interest in art history has allowed to explore contemporary issues while still referencing historical and fictional characters such as Manet's Olympia and Nana, Ophelia, Aunt Jemeima and her own dance-hall alter ego.

About here work - from the artists website (see below):

"Earlier work dwelt on the character of a faceless little girl trapped within a domestic world of feminine patterns and genteel furniture. Later work used an Aunt Jemima figurine negotiating her way through a Victorian social setting.The work featured in the show employs characters based on the Abu Graihb image of a tortured prisoner and the tragic figure of Shakespeare’s Ophelia. Russell lives and works in St. Andrew, Jamaica."

Omari Ra (Robert Cookhorne/African)

Omari Ra has maintained the ‘enfant terrible ‘ image acquired at the Jamaica School of Art, even though it is nearly twenty years since he graduated. Back then, he was known to his fellow students as ‘African’ a pseudonym perfectly suited to his black separatist concerns and his image as radical painter. His reputation stuck because he seemed so perfectly suited as a leader of Jamaica’s younger artists who matured in the shadows of party-political intrigues, ghetto wars and dancehall. In the 1980s, when ‘African’ changed his name to ‘Omari Ra’, a handful of his friends adopted similar names: evidence of his influence.

Omari’s influence also spread because of his skills as a teacher. After graduating he began teaching painting and drawing in the college’s evening programme. His classes were popular because they featured ‘roots’ music and an on-going dialogue about identity and culture with his students. Today, these discussions continue but in a newly designed courses with names like called ‘ Reel Politics and Perception’ and Caribbean Identity: The New Black Culture’ where students get to explore issues raised in art, literature and film.

But Omari’s reputation rests solidly on his ability as a painter. He is a skilled draughtsman and a flambouyant experimental painter who mixes his mediums with surety and purpose. Most importantly, African’s paintings brim with ideas. He has the ability to translate contemporary concerns into the language of painting and to make visible many of our fears and idiosyncracies that are otherwise difficult to articulate.

© PA-S

 

Kalfani Ra (Douglas Wallace/Makandal)

In his earliest years at the Jamaica School of Art, Kalfani Ra’s work was viewed as radical and progressive.  In those days  ‘Dougy’ (as he was then called) had a reputation for  being unconventional and  for constantly challenging  his peers and tutors.  His approach found sympathy with fellow-students like Omari Ra, Stanford Watson and Valentine Fairclough who were experimenting not only with the formal concepts of painting but also with the whole thought structure that underpinned Western notions of art and life.  Together they developed new approaches to painting and a black world-view  that has become central to Kalfani Ra’s  experimental work.  

This ‘ mind shift’ did not come through a seamless progression of ideas and actions. Rather, the artist’s work has been through a number of changes that like his names ‘Makandal Dada’ and finally ‘Kalfani Ra’ reflected his rebirth as a painter and the development of his black consciousness. Central to this process of maturation was Kalfani Ra’s participation in an international Triangle Workshop that allowed him to visit Zimbabwe and gather first hand experience of life in Africa.Kalfani Ra’s paintings executed with a hard edged, graphic cartoon style reflect his interest in agit-prop and advertising. Despite his use of signs and symbols his paintings like ‘reggae’s message music’ are heavily politicised and readily deciphered. They are concerned with post-colonial black societies and their survival outside of American hegemony. Often they are hard-hitting and scathing in their judgment of Jamaican society and its alienating life styles. But conversely, there is a concern and empathy with Jamaica’s disenfranchised masses that makes even Kalfani Ra’s most sensationalised work, poignant and poetic.

David Pottinger (1911-2007)

David Pottinger was one of Jamaica’s pioneer painters. His interest in art dated back to the days when volunteer art classes were held at the Institute of Jamaica for the sake of developing artists with a Jamaican vision. In the seventy-odd years that he painted his commitment to the painting of genre scenes and nationalist vision has never faltered.

Essentially self-taught, David ‘Jack’ Pottinger began his career as a sign painter. From the outset, he was a man of the streets dedicating his painting to the vagaries of life in Kingston. He captured the city in all its moods, as has been described in the citation to mark his gold medal laureate status: “If  Huie is the landscapist of the Nationalist Movement par excellence, then Pottinger can be defined as his urban counterpart. A self-portrait or two, a handful of landscapes usually drawn from the outskirts of Kingston, a few still-lifes, and fewer still religious paintings aside, Pottinger’s life-work has been devoted to a single prescribed subject, but a subject of myriad possibilities; the streets and lanes, the sidewalks, buildings and backyards of Old Kingston and the parade of walking, jostling, cart-pushing, higglering, swaying-to-the-spirit neighbours that move, squat, lounge, hawk, haggle on the byways and the the old city where he was born and continues to make his home. This prescribed subject, and consistency and quality of his vision are principal characteristics of his art”.

Stylistically Pottinger was equally consistent and his oeuvre was characterised by very clear distinguishable phases. His early works were marked by realism and naturalistic representation of light. But by the 1960s they were distinguished by the  darker tones of his palette and a melancholy contemplation of the realities of life in the poorer areas of Kingston. In later decades, his work would shift once again to a more vibrant use of colour and energetic brushwork, only to return to a sombre mood in later life. Throughout these different phases, his mannered depiction of the people of Kingston remained the same; attenuated faceless figures, dark and Giacometti-like, stand tall alongside their oppressive, urban surroundings. All this has made Pottinger one of Jamaica’s national treasures, and his art is sought out by many who remember Kingston with a sense of nostalgia. His works have become a record of a lifestyle that is all too quickly passing. PA-S

Gene Pearson

Gene Pearson’s influence on the making of ceramics in Jamaica is staggering. His stylised ceramic heads have become his trademark and their haunting profiles have influenced many potters and painters locally and abroad. Trained at the Jamaica School of Art his work shows the stylistic influence of peers such as Christopher Gonzales and conceptual links to pioneers such as Osmond Watson.

Very early in his career, Gene Pearson began working with forms that  were a stylistic blend of  African Baule masks, Egyptian sculpture  and his own Jamaican sensibility with all its references to ‘roots’ culture and Rastafari. The result was a form of sculpture/ceramic object that referenced classical forms of proportion, portrayed the African physiognomy with refined dignity and evoked a sense mythical African ancestry. The eclectic and synthesised nature of his work seemed perfectly suited to the needs of his Jamaican viewers who saw in his ceramic forms a reflection of their multi cultural heritage. Now Gene Pearson’s work is just as popular abroad and he divides his time between working at his home in Red Hills and exhibiting in California.

His works have been presented to various foriegn dignataries, heads of states and celebrities including Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union, Phan Van Dong of Vietnam. They can also be seen on film sets such as “Trapper MD”,  and in the private collections of Stevie Wonder, Diahann Carrol and Madge Sinclair.PA-S

Winston Patrick

Winston Patrick considers himself fortunate to have studied at the Jamaica School of Art during the time of Barrington Watson and Colin Garland. Both artists had an impact on his career; in particular, the memory of Colin Garland’s keen observation and attention to detail would always stay with him, while he would be grateful to Barrington Watson for his support and the opportunity Watson provided  for  him  to travel, to see works of great artists and to expand his insights as an artist.

Winston Patrick’s visits to Europe opened him up to new dimensions in art, he was introduced to new types of artistic expression in both European and African art and he also looked at the old masters.During the 1970s his work was mainly influenced by visits abroad and developed through his love for wood as a medium of self-expression. Sculpture was for him, however, a reductive process as he tried to master the material wood. Now, he brings his minimalist aesthetic to the commissions that  he has gained throughout the Caribbean for companies like Sandals, Myers Fletcher and Gordon, and Dehring Bunting and Golding. His work has become what he calls,” environmental “ concentrating on metal and architectural designs and thus combining art and design. He says: “I believe that survival as an artist is being able to express art without compromise or dependence”.PA-S

Ebony G. Patterson

Ebony G. Patterson is a graduate of the Edna Manley College of Visual and Performing Arts who is currently working as an Assistant Professor in Painting at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY. While still a students she gained a great deal of attention for her bold paintings that focused on female genitalia. Since 2002 she has participated in several shows including Taboo a small group exhibition that she curated. She has been the recipient of several awards. In 2006 she was awarded the Prime Minister's Youth Awards for Excellence in Arts and Culture. The highest award that a young person can receive in this field in Jamaica.

Discussing her work she says: Beauty, gender, body and the grotesque are on going discussion in my work. I am enthralled by the repulsive, the bizarre and the objectness of bodies and the contradictions that both have to art historically and culturally. The Jamaican vernacular, gendered cultural symbolisms and stereotypes serve as a platform for these discussions. I am enthused by words, conditions and experiences that objectify and abjectify.

Menstrual documents, cuts, bruises , language, feminine excrement, peeled skins, bleached skins, decadence, nippled and vulvic forms, the feminine , disease, feminine motifs, and accents are reoccurring images within my work. I seek to reference beauty through the use of the grotesque but visceral, confrontational and deconstructed.

Ebony's most recent exhibition is Gangstas, Disciplez and Doiley Boyz a show dominated by portraits of young Jamaican men who bleach their skin, pluck their eyebrows and wear 'bling' jewellery in defiance of racial and sexual stereotypes. Ebony finds beauty in their psychic violence glamourizing them with glittered halos and luscious lipstick.Through these paintings she questions why young black men, especially those related to Jamaica's dance hall culture, are regularly viewed in terms of aggression. She re-balances this male macho personna with feminine touches and homo-erotica.