Description
Oh my long ignored and abandoned baby – my art. The purpose of this blog is to force me to organise my creative rediscovery. I’ve spent a lot of the last few years (almost a decade actually!) floundering in a creative wilderness. Basically I let life get in the way, suck the soul out of me, and succumbed to temporary amnesia where my creative self was concerned. 6 years of marriage, 2 babies, 1 big move out of London, and 3 years before the big 4-0, I am re-emerging, rediscovering and coming alive. I mean, there is only so much Cbeebies (UK kids TV) a person can watch!
Still, there are some older art pieces that have survived the move from Trinidad and the wilderness years that followed. This post is for them. I’ve long lost most of the back story for them but what little can be found is here for you to see. Let’s see if I can put them in chronological order…
Joy & Heat
2 minis done for the by Leigh handcrafted calendar of 1998. This was back in the day when I owned and ran a creative production house in Trinidad & Tobago called, you guessed it, by Leigh. We operated out my parents’ back patio, a giant patio that I utterly miss! Heat – because this is what you create if you listen to sexy cd’s on repeat; and Joy – because this is what you feel when you’re bursting with the newness, promise, excitement and wonder of a new year and all the magic that promises! Heat is acrylic on paper and Joy is oil pastel on sugar paper. I can hear the gasps from here… all I can say is that I knew a lot less about art materials then. Forgive me?
Ahhh! Frustration.
Wish I could remember everything I did in 2001 but when you move countries and leave a lot of your life behind, it’s hard to keep track. What I do know is that somewhere in 2001 I was frustrated beyond belief because this lovely number was my release.
A very very long moment of abject and utter frustration with my life that needed an outlet, this black paper stuck to board savaged by a white and a grey oil pastel crayon = the outlet. Boy, was that healing!
That’s the funny thing about time though… try as I might, I cannot think what I was so frustrated about but I bet back then it was tantamount to the “end of the world” as I knew it. Nice to look back and laugh at myself, at least I have a lovely piece of art to show for it!
Sunrise.
One June morning this skyscape literally just fell out of my head and on to a canvas. I rolled out of bed and stepped up to the canvas; it was painting in lieu of my morning meditation. Took 45 mins and when I surfaced, there it was in all its glory. To this day I do not know where it came from and how I did it.
Amniotic Safety
I can’t remember exactly what was going on in my world when this was painted. I know I was living with a gay Irishman (he was like family!) and a Gothic Brit bloke (who kept very much to himself) in Finsbury Park. LikeSunrise, this too was a spur of the moment piece, but I haven’t the foggiest what inspired it.
Sun Blossom
Sun Blossom | Drawn while living in Barking, East London at friends of my Dad’s for 2 weeks in August because I was between house-shares. Yep, the last one ended before the next could begin i.e. I was homeless and commuting from Barking to Pimlico for work everyday but apparently my outlook on the entire thing was very bright and sunny cause hey, look what I drew!
Sunshine Sari (ink), Sunshine Sari (colour).
I have always had a fascination for East Indian fashion, celebrations and ceremonies. It’s not hard to develop when you grow up in a country where roughly half the population are of mainly East Indian descent. I grew up celebrating Eid and Divali right alongside Easter and Christmas. That aside, have you ever seen a Hindu Bride? Wow! Sunshine Sari is my way of remembering a rich, multifaceted culture that I missed being a part of while I was recreating the life of Selvon’s Lonely Londoner in September 2004.
Now Comes the Night.
Somewhere in October I developed a fascination with silhouettes, shadowed outlines and stunning background colours… I guess I was just noticing the change of season and the loss of light. I did a few oil pastel sketches of scenes like this and outlined them with black fabric scribblers cause I liked the raised effect, but then decided against it when I actually painted it. I was really curious about exploring different drawing styles at the time too, thinking mine was so so boring. Looking back on it now, both pieces just seem lazy. The thought process was there but I didn’t really work very hard at exploring it.
Ice Cold
November – a Caribbean girl in a temperate country at the end of Autumn… need I say more?
