painter

Remembering Vera

Submitted byJeeraik009 onFri, 06/01/2012 - 09:03

This week members of the National Gallery community gathered to welcome a painting into its collection by the late Canadian artist Vera Cumming (1921-1996). The painting was presented to the Gallery by her nephew Lawrence Cumming who had overseen preparations for its restoration and journey from Canada. The new acquisition called Jamaican Girl (c.1951) was created by the Vera Cumming whilst she was living in Jamaica and volunteer teaching at the Institute of Jamaica. It depicts a young buxom woman positioned somewhat awkwardly against the backdrop of a revival meeting: a vignette that brings to mind the street scenes of David Pottinger. As chief curator Dr. David Boxer pointed out in his introductory remarks, the painting is significant not just for what it tells us about the artist's spiritual concerns but also for how it demonstrates her stylistic influence on a younger group of artists such as Henry Daley and Pottinger whom Vera likely taught in the early days of the nationalist movement. Working alongside Edna Manley, Vera was one of a handful of expatriates such as Koren der Harootian and Vera Alabaster who used their skills to instruct and encourage young Jamaican artists to paint local subjects. Jamaican Girl is the donation of Toronto based family of Diana Haddad and the late John Haddad, keen to see Vera Cumming remembered with a work of such cultural importance.

Stanley Barnes

Stanley Barnes’ talent as a painter was recognised quickly at the Jamaica School of Art, but, as painting tutor Kofi Kayiga noted in his term report, his progress was marred by a tendency to be mischevious and an arrogance that made him unwilling to conform or comply with regular attendence at classes. His dismissive approach to formal tuition seemed not to harm his artistic development. Even before Stanley Barnes had graduated his work was shown in a travelling exhibition of Jamaican art to the United States and Canada, giving credence to his precocious skills.

After graduation, Stanley Barnes proved that he was ready to take on the Jamaican art world. As Petrona Morrison of the National Gallery was to later record . “In the following years he consistently demonstrated a committment to his art, exhibiting extensively in group shows and national exhibitions, establishing himself as a serious artist“. For all his machismo, Stanley Barnes was a nurturer evidenced by his close relationship with his son, his dedication to teaching, his meticulous approach to restoration as the National Gallery’s Conservator and his thorough attention to detail in his own work. It is therefore not surprising that the 'Mother and Child' was a recurring theme in his paintings that tended to be small and exquisitely rendered. Barnes favoured Cubism, but his interest in European modern styles was tempered by explorations of Caribbean light, colour and forms and a strong sense of nationalism that dictated his subject matter.

Jamaican infuences on his work came from black nationalist artists like Osmond Watson and also from intuitives like Woody Josephs whose sculptures inspired anguished heads and abstract forms not unlike Caribbean versions of Picasso’s Guernica. But, despite his interest in mural painting Stanley Barnes’ oeuvre never achieved the scale of the Mexican muralists that he admired. His untimely death means that we can never guage fully the extent of his talent and desire.

Christopher Irons

Christopher Irons is a graduate of the EMSVA. He distinguished himself while still at college by being chosen most outstanding student of the second year and by receiving scholarships from the Bolivar and Student Council, Multi Care Foundation and the Ronald Moodie Scholarship. After graduating in 1998 he was selected to continue post-graduate studies in painting at the EMSVA. Christopher has also been the lead singer in the musical band Assesimba. He has gained a number of awards including  first prize in the Wray and Nephew - Spirit of Jamaica Competition  and an award for his participation inthe environmental programme at Gideon Educational Centre. PA-S 

Cheryl Daley Champagnie

Those who were at  Art School with Cheryl Daley Champagnie will remember her obsession with texture. It was a theme that dominated her graduation exhibition and led her to paper-making and print-making, her later passions.  To many her preoccupations seemed disparate and self indulgent but  those who followed her interests closely recognised the process; the unfolding of an oeuvre that was complex, multi layered and all encompassing.

Whenever she becomes interested in an art form she must pursue it until she has conquered it, both technically and emotionally.  Professor Curlee Raven Holten,  has written, “I was first introduced to Cheryl Daley-Champagnie during a tour of the Edna Manley School for Visual Arts and was immediately taken by the power of her personality and her work. Shortly following my visit she came to New York to work at the famous Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. During her first visit I had the opportunity to work with her there and at my studio at Lafayette College in Eason, Pennsylvania. I observed the development of her most recent images in the Dwelling Series. She approached her work with a passion and sense of intuitive faith of an individual both delirious in her dedication and mature in her vision. I watched as she constructed the spaces of what would later house her figures, always wondering whether she placed them there to protect or to imprison them. This ambiguity seems to empower the images as we decipher their meaning and their relationship to our own lives. “  PA-S 2000 

Rafiki Kariuki

“The dismantling of apartheid in South Africa  was a breath of fresh air after so many bitter years of struggle by its people to rid themselvess of a brutal and bloody system that denied  them basic fundemental  rights of justice, equality and dignity.” As an artist and a humanist Rafiki Kariuki  says he is proud to have played his part in this struggle by producing works that provoked thoughts and  statements against the monstrous system of apartheid. In the heat of the struggle in the 1980s,  he produced several pieces such as War on Apartheid, Freedom Fighter, Crying in Soweto, Wounds of Apartheid and Flame  that spoke to the human condition, his primary interest in art.  Often Rafiki Kariuki’s  imagery depicts mankind as alienated, defeated, rejected, disillusioned  and  hampered,  but  there are also signs of  hope and  ways for mankind to  triumph and to participate in the real meaning of life. In 1991 he exhibited a body of  work entitled Vibes and Visions. In that exhibition he explored ideas about man, his environment and spirituality through paintings such as   Mystic Man, Man of Vision, Neighborhood, A Dry White Season, Supplication  and Meditation. He says. “My work poses many challenges in pursuit of  political ,theoretical  and spiritual concerns, and  generates a multiplicity  of forms and ideas that  harness my training and aesthetic awareness". PA-S 2000 

Bryan McFarlane

Bryan McFarlane was born in Moore Town, Portland, a place renowned for its heritage and the Maroons from whom he claims descent. As a result, history and identity are important themes in his work. His understanding of his own ancestry is paralleled with an interest in the diversity of the world's cultures and fuelled by his extensive travels that since his graduation have taken him to West Asia, Africa, South America, Europe and the Caribbean. His travels have inspired his paintings and provided visual metaphors for his formal pictoral references and content. He says, “My current work deals with the permanent and yet fleeting aspect of time. I see time as a mythical phenomena overlapping scientific and measured time. My work is about how arts and artifacts of diverse cultures have similar functions and meaning and yet may cause conflicts depending on personal and cultural perspectives. My work celebrates diverse cultures and their connectedness”.

 Bryan McFarlane was the second recipient of the Karl Parboosing Fellowship that took him first to London and then to Boston where he completed graduate studies. Another highlight of his career was when he received a Bachelor Ford Faculty Fellowship to research and paint in Bahia, Brazil. He subsequently completed large scale paintings that were featured at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston (ICA) and the Rose Art Museum. In 1987, he was commissioned by Miller Brewing Company/Phillip Morris to paint portraits of 12 leading African-American journalists for reproduction in their Gallery of Greats calendar. This work is now in the permanent collection of the DuSable Museum in Chicago. Bryan McFarlane y shows with Brenda Taylor Gallery and the George Adams Gallery, both in New York, along with a number of other institutions through North America, South America and Europe. For the past four years he has maintained a studio in Beijing and staged his most important exhibitions in Beijing and Shanghai. 

He writes: "We are at the end of an extended period of western cultural and ‘imperial dominance’-a period when both western aggrandizement and Soviet ideological straight jackets have run their course. These long competing systems have imploded, exhausted of new ideas and at times- depleted of originality. The vitality of the ascending order is emerging from the new cultures of the developing world, both in their own nations and in the great cities of the decaying old order. These new cultures are forging the future through their fresh zest for life, and growing discovery of their creative genius."

View the artist's website


Whitney Miller

Whitney Miller was among the earliest  batch of students who attended the Jamaica School of Art and Crafts during the 1950s, and he graduated in 1963 as one of the first students to receive a diploma. Initially, he wanted to be a sculptor  and was taught and encouraged by the late Edna Manley, but eventually he developed into a painter of figure compositions  that the critic Andrew Hope has described as having ‘classical harmony and serenity’ (Andrew Hope, The Sunday Gleaner 1 October 1989).

 Along with fellow-student, Christopher Gonzales,  he won a scholarship in 1965  to study in Denmark. On his return  he took up a teaching post at Manchester High School but also maintained his friendships with Kingston colleagues, George Rodney and Keith Curwin. The three artists shared studio space initially  on Constant Spring Road and then Beechwood Avenue, and although Whitney Miller continued to teach in the countryside, he would travel to Kingston every weekend to paint there.

Like his temperament, his paintings are quiet, placid compositions of everyday life in Kingston, normally with only one or two substantial figures. His women are solid and ‘matisse-like’  demeters that betray the artists interest in sculpture and three dimensional forms, whereas his  men are equally solid but not as imposing.  If there is  tension in his work it  is between the materiality of his paintings and their surreal stillness. Whitney Miler’s work in scale, subject matter and execution showed all the signs of greatness, however his death in 1988 robbed Jamaica of one of its best genre painters. PA-S 2000 

Underlying greatness

Submitted byJeeraik009 onFri, 07/09/2010 - 14:46

One of the highlights of this year's Kingston on the Edge festival was an all too brief exhibition of drawings by the late artist Karl Parboosingh shown at the Bolivar in Kingston. Mounted by curator Claudia Hucke and very competently documented in its accompanying catalogue, the show presents a selection of Parboosingh's drawings taken from a sketchbook that he carried while he traveled through Europe and New York during the fifties. Additionally, there are drawings representing later works such as the preparatory sketches for his Wilton Gardens murals painted in Tivoli Kingston once he returned to Jamaica. Appropriately titled Jazz and Tings, the exhibition provides a fascinating glimpse into Parboosingh's bohemian life amongst avant garde artists that included modernists Fernand Leger and Raoul Dufy, and musicians such as Miles Davis and Charlie Parker; all major influences on Parboosingh. Created very early in his career, these drawings show little of the bold style that would define his later work. Instead, these are simple sketches that reflect Parboosingh's earliest development as an artist as well as his exploration of techniques and styles. Watercolours, line drawings and dense cross hatching reflect his search for a distinctive style. They also reveal the insecurities and weaknesses that he would learn to mask in later paintings.

Osmond Watson

Born in Kingston, Osmond Watson was a graduate of one of the first teaching programmes created by Edna Manley at the Jamaica School of Art and Crafts. In 1961, disappointed at the failure of plans for a West Indian Federation, he decided to travel to England with the intention of furthering his studies. He registered at St Martin’s School of Art, London, but spent much of his time teaching himself through visits to view the African masks at the British Museum and works of the modern masters at the Tate. After a brief stint in Paris he returned to London and remained there until 1965.

Back in Jamaica, he began teaching at the Jamaica School of Art where his students included Kofi Kayiga. He also began exhibiting regularly in single person and group exhibitions including the Sao Paulo Biennial in 1971, Ten Jamaican Sculptors, Commonwealth Institute, London 1975 and the SITES: Jamaican Art 1922-1982 exhibition in Washingston USA.

Watson’s style is unwavering, since the sixties when he began to synthesise cubist and iconic decorative elements in his work, his images have become ritualized, wavering only to accommodate the acrid and plastic finish resulting from his shift from oil to acrylic paints.

The statements expressed through Watson’s work are bold and uncompromising. His genre scenes and portraits speak about the lives of everyday people. With hindsight, they appear like animated documents of daily life in an increasingly urban community; one of pushcarts and street vendors all hustling to stay above the poverty line, Watch Video Johnny Cool

But Watson’s images are not depressing instead they celebrate survival and they bring a sense of dignity and even divinity to the depiction of black people. In Watson’s world we can almost hear the insistent demands of ska, reggae and rock steady music blasting on the roadside, or the quietly hummed psalms of ancient mothers as they wisely accommodate the errant ways of their young. In later years, his works became even more reverential as he repeated his mother and child images and depictions of Christ as a black man that were sometimes himself. With icons and symbols he used his art to uplift the race. In an often quoted statement he said: 

As an Afro-Caribbean man who resides in the Caribbean and is faced with Caribbean problems, my philosophy on art is simple. My aim is to glorify Black people through my work with the hope that it will uplift the masses of the region, giving dignity and self-respect where it is needed and to make people more aware of their own beauty." OW (1995)

Osmond Watson was a prolific painter whose works can be found in numerous local and international collections. In 1992, he was awarded a prestigious Gold Musgrave Medal by the Institute of Jamaica. He died in November 2005.

© PA-S

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.