#sexypink/painting/Trinidad and Tobago

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Sexypink - come catch it.

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Sexypink - A huge loss to Trinidad and Tobago. Thank you Geoffrey for your vision, kindness and love.

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Geoffrey's contribution to Art history. He was the definitive writer on Cazabon.

An image of one of Cazabon's paintings.

Finally, a beautiful tribute to Geoffrey MacLean from one of many friends.

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TRIBUTE TO GEOFFREY MACLEAN. In each island nation of the Eastern Caribbean, economies of scale make it so that there are only one or two (and if they are lucky, three or four) local experts in some field of study which has little to do with industry or clerical work but everything to do with the national character and its history. Because they are often without precedent, these experts often have had to travel abroad for their training or are otherwise self-trained in their chosen sector of the liberal arts/humanities/social sciences.

Trained architect and avocational art historian Geoffrey MacLean was one of these indispensable sages in the field of visual studies and the built environment. He was the world’s foremost specialist on nineteenth-century landscape and genre painter Michel Jean Cazabon. Cazabon was a partially unwitting member of a global late colonial/early post-colonial landscape painting tradition that encompassed artists such as Mexican José María Velasco, the Chartrand brothers of Cuba, Filipino painter Fernando Amorsolo, and the painters of the Hudson River School in the United States. What all of these artists had in common was their urgent need to capture and pay tribute for posterity to the natural beauty of their respective lands before that “Edenic” verdure was despoiled by then-already encroaching industrialization.

MacLean’s passion for Cazabon pressed him not only to hone further the scholastic abilities he had already developed at Presentation College in his native Trinidad and Bristol University in the U.K. but to travel back and forth between the Caribbean and Europe hunting down examples and collections of Cazabon’s work. He also assisted the government of the Republic of Trinidad & Tobago in the acquisition of some Cazabon works for display in its National Museum and Art Gallery.

MacLean was generous with his knowledge, his time, and with his published materials. Every time I visited him, I came home with an armful of books and catalogues (one of my favorites is an unassuming little pamphlet of a catalogue called Chinese Artists of Trinidad & Tobago which probably played some part in my decision to write the book about Sybil Atteck on which I am currently working with Sybil’s nephew Keith). In graduate school, I relied heavily on MacLean’s Cazabon books for the research I was doing on colonial Latin American and Caribbean painting. MacLean’s enthusiasm for Cazabon’s genre painting, especially his rapt verbal and written descriptions of the late 19th century painting Negress in Gala Dress (pictured here) revealed to me that Cazabon’s paintings of local “types” (e.g., “Negress” instead of named individual) was sometimes a form of real portraiture and thus departed the tipo de país-to-costumbrismo continuum that we sometimes use in Latin American art history. Cazabon loved his people too much and included too much implied biography and other narratives in those paintings, to reduce their subjects to mere “types.” His titles were thus deceptively taxonomic.

Architect, scholar, art gallery director Geoffrey MacLean’s contribution to the study and preservation of T&T’s architecture was legendary even before his passing. He has searched out original plans for fretwork houses and saved some of these architectural jewels from the bulldozers of “developers.” He has done the same for members of the Magnificent Seven around the Queen’s Park Savannah and taught workshops on both the civic and residential architecture of Trinidad & Tobago. As MacLean himself now passes into legend, we are left with the perennial question in these small and mid-sized islands of the Eastern Caribbean each with their two or three experts on local art and architecture – who will pick up the torch?

~ Lawrence Waldron

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Michel Jean Cazabon

« French Negress in gala dress »

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Sexypink - Che Lovelace adds his Art to rum.

Sexypink/ Che Lovelace

Sexypink/ a closer look.

Sexypink - label Art.

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Sexypink - Out of the blocks for 2024. What a delight that a book begins the year.

From Dr Marsha Pearce's Facebook page...

I am happy to announce the release of Black Light Void: Dark Visions of the Caribbean. The book is an edited collection of paintings by Trinidadian artist Edward Bowen and six short-story responses to Bowen's work, written by Trinidadian award-winning writers Kevin Jared Hosein, Barbara Jenkins, Sharon Millar, Amílcar Presi Sanatan, Portia Subran and Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw.

As Editor, Dr Marsha Pearce states...

With this book project, I ask: What stories lie beyond those experiences lit up by the sun–the light that is a defining feature of the tropics?

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SEXYPINK Reviews: I went for a drive and Never Came Back - Tracey Johnson

(Solo show) LOFTT Gallery Roselino Street Woodbrook

October 6 -20th 2023

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A ditty of Bruce Springsteen and the title of a recently completed Solo show by the prolific Tracey Johnson at Loftt in Woodbrook discusses a restless spirit. Springsteen croons ‘ride, and never went back, Johnson, ‘drive, and Never Came Back’.

Whatever the lyrics Miss Johnson has single handedly shown why going to Art shows matter. Her Hyper Realistic, Expressionistic Abstractions are thought provoking masterful works. 

Her technical skills are so on point that as you stand next to her girl smiling or red devil, it takes a few seconds for ones thoughts to wrap around the fact that these ARE NOT photographs.

Even more so, her decision to deliberately toy with reality by blurring, marking and splattering heightens the delightful drama on the canvases.

For example her egg drop sun and black drizzle over the La Basse image could be gimmicky in any other hands.

Miss Johnson triumphs here by instinctively being in synch with every single brush stroke she renders. She gives just enough shift from Realism to Fantasy as can be seen in Maracas beach where her sun is a child’s playful scrawl.

What I appreciate most about I went for a drive and Never Came Back is its unexpected candor on life in the tropical paradise that is Trinidad and Tobago.

Overlaying frenetic markings on captured moments, defining the happenstance of one’s input like a diary or a witness to the mundane (beauty) likened to the simplicity of  driving on a dark night - is all done with an ease, an exceptional understanding of painting. It is a comprehension fraught with the discipline of getting out of the way and letting the energy come forward as she does - not simple or easy at all.

Everybody has a hungry heart, Springsteen sings and Miss Johnson’s heart beats for us in her work. One of the most impactful shows of 2023 so far. 

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Sexypink - Tessa Alexander Sloane Seale - Carnival work in Trinidad and Tobago-2023

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Statement from Tessa herself ....

Carnival comes home and we celebrate 60yrs of Panorama! 

Who ready...Living Ritual series 2023. 

Each watercolour and collage pan piece is 11x14" (28x35.6cm) but can be combined to form a larger piece as shown.

This series incorporates my research on ancestral art techniques and textiles acknowledging the contributions of those who against all odds gifted us with our carnival culture.

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Che Lovelace

SEXYPINK - Che Lovelace’s paintings are at LOFTT for a brief time. Go check them out.

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Sexypink - Che Lovelace - Trinidad and Tobago

& from his Facebook page...Very very excited! My first full scale New York gallery exhibition opens one week from now on Thursday 9th March at the Nicola Vassell Gallery in Chelsea.

The exhibition brings together paintings, some of which I’ve been working on for several years, all focused around the body and water.

Our relationship with water…the sea, rivers etc. here in the Caribbean is a complex one, and I have tried to translate through my own experiences what that relationship feels and looks like.

Folks in the New York area do come by and say hi at the opening (6-8pm) or check out the show when you have time…it runs until April 15th

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Sexypink - See the works of Shawn Peters

Sexypink - Sculpture at its finest - Shawn Peters.

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Sexypink - join Reah Lee Sing and Chris Anderson to walk in light.

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Sexypink - the dreamy visions of Ashley Thompson Steuart.

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Sexypink - an opportunity to go down memory lane and to also experience works of the past possibly never seen.

Sexypink - Studio Joli save the date event.

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Sexypink - Vida Mitchell at The LOFTT

A tribute to her father’s bar in Laventille. Ms Mitchell takes a close look at the environment and experiences of inner city nightlife.

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Sexypink - Aurora Honeywell

When I come across work I have not seen before, and it causes me to pause, it is always a special feeling and moment. I look forward to more.

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Sexypink - Michele Isava studio sale

Sexypink - paintings and ceramic pieces.