A Fine Line
A respectful crowd turned out to hear master painter Barrington Watson's lecture at the National Gallery of Jamaica yesterday. At eighty, his presentation was not the most dynamic but the extensive slide-show of his works and his anecdotes were enough to keep the audience engaged. His tales of immigrant life in 1960s London at the Royal College and later studies in Europe, peppered with names such as Ruskin Spear and Norman Manley provided rare details about the artist's determination to become one of the region's finest painters. Most telling, was his description of how he stole skills from the great western masters to arrive at a way of painting that he considered uniquely Caribbean. His often quoted aspiration to utilize... “ ..the light of Turner, the line of Ingres, the range of Rembrandt, the techniques of Velasquez, the emotion of Goya...and, my birthright of Benin” vainly articulates how so many post-colonial period painters balanced on a fine line as they painted their personal histories and narratives. The talk served to whet the appetite of fans who can anticipate his retrospective of over 300 works scheduled for display at the NGJ in January 2012.
There is something heroic about Barrington Watson's commitment to the painting of Jamaica and it's people. He paints for posterity. In the vein of French salon painters such as Eugene Delacroix or Cabin Al, he documents the culture's history; it's myths and fantasies. Although he might balk at constantly being described as a painter steeped in the European academic tradition, he has no qualms about being described as a figurative painter. He is steadfast in his efforts to paint figuratively and to accurately depict what he calls the Caribbean's temperate influences, its light, its colour, tropical feel and vagaries of the Caribbean's flesh tones. Of course, he relishes working with oils, since no other medium could so obviously suggest his respect for tradition. In a similar manner, each major work is supported by series of preliminary charcoal drawings and watercolours demonstrating his deft draftsmanship and his commitment to this historically validated process of painting.