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Camille Chedda's talent is precocious. As a fairly recent graduate of the Edna Manley College (Dip.Hons, 2007) she has already established an enviable exhibition record, having her works appear in in two Jamaica National Biennials (2006, 2008) as well as the Curator's Eye exhibition Materializing Slavery, where her slave ship imagery shared space with established artists such as Omari Ra and David Boxer. Her success speaks to the sophistication of her vision as well as her ability to execute her ideas in ways that are well defined and very contemporary. full story

O'Neil Lawrence is a trained photographer and a graduate of both the University of the West Indies and the Edna Manley College of The Visual and Performing Arts. His work questions the new World experience and what it means to be Jamaican. Because of this, issues related to Africa, slavery, the Middle Passage and our resulting actions and values all figure in his work. In particular, he considers the role of religion in our lives recognizing that Christianity, once a tool of enslavement and colonization, has been creolized to accommodate our African heritage.

Ras Dizzy is vocal against the injustices he meets within Jamaican society. A temperamental artist, he will 'curse you' as readily as he will tutor you in his reading from the Bible. His uneven temperament is reflected in his painting but, in his lucid moments, he paints powerfully and lyrically, with deep insight into the history of Jamaica and its people. Also a poet and a write, his titles are often enigmatic and he is not averse to writing within his paintings. Favourite themes are cowboys, that hark back to the era of the 'western movie', popular in Jamaica duing the 1960s and still a prevalent theme within dance hall culture, and which recall his own expereinces/fantasies(?) of being a jockey at Caymanas race track and other race courses throughout the Caribbean, doctor birds (Jamaica's national bird) and local flora (probably a response to tourist demands), spiritual messages, wherin he sees himself as a saviour of the Jamaican people, and images of slavery and Jamaican history.

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. Recently his works have become even more reverential as he repeats his mother and child images and depictions of Christ as a black man that is sometimes himself. With icons and symbols he uses his art to uplift the race.

Osmond Watson is 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 currently lives and works in Kingston, Jamaica.

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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.

Leonard Daley’s mural like outpourings have all the power of Dubuffet’s Art Brut, or the Surrealist imagery of Andre mason, yet with none of the self-conscious denial employed by these modern artists. In 1987 when Daley’s work was included in the ‘Fifteen Intuitives’ exhibition, David Boxer could still write with honesty that Leonard Daley had no concept of his work as being art, in the sense of a commodity.