#sexypink/portraiture

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SEXYPINK - Trinidad and Tobago Photographer Abigail Hadeed’s recollections of her photoshoot with Black Stalin. Her curiosity and genuine desire to capture her own culture produced these stunning portraits.

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Abigail Hadeed on Photographing the Stars

“We Can Make it IF We Try” In the Mid 80’s I started photographing traditional mas and the steel bands in and around Port of Spain. I was young, in my early 20’s with a passion and desire to learn and explore Trinidad and it’s culture. 

On my own I began to explore South East POS, Laventille, Belmont and the panyards the traditional mas camps, Minshall, you name it I did it.  

 followed my instinct and allowed things to unfold. At the time I did not have a plan and or know that 3 decades would just fly by and along the way I had and have worked with the Regions best and greatest. I have much to be thankful for, being born at the time i have, the people who let me in, and the spaces and people that fed my soul.

 The Black Stalin was definitely one of those memorable shoots at the studio on Long Circular Road.  Black Stalin circa 1991

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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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Sexypink - International Art news.. - Image against likeness.

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From the Facebook page of Abigail Hadeed - Her latest body of photographs

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These portraits of Richard Fung where made while he was here working on a new film project. Richard is a well know video artist, writer, public intellectual and theorist based in Toronto.

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Sexypink - Trinidadian artist Sarah Knights talks to Helen Rosslyn about the biggest commission of her life: capturing a King for Tatler’s exclusive cover portrait, set to go on display at Sotheby’s this summer.Published online 17 May 2023

Tatler heralds a new royal era with a historic portrait of King Charles III for the cover of the July issue. 

See full online article by Helen Rosslyn here -https://www.tatler.com/.../king-charles-iii-new-portrait...This article was originally published in the July issue, on sale 25 May 2003

Copyright: Tatler Magazine, Vogue House

Photography credit: Stefano Caines

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Sexypink - Demosthene mystifies.

M Florine Demosthene

A closer look.

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Sexypink - Studio Zano’s portrait workshop - save the date.

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Sexypink - We have a Trini in Venice! Dr Pearce represents us at the 14 th edition of the Black Portraiture (s) Conference.

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Sexypink - Bony Ramirez - Dominican Republic - Shows on now in New York

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Sexypink - California-based, Bahamian artist April Bey @aprilbey_ is one of 14 artists featured in a group exhibition entitled "Witness" co-curated by Tina Knowles Lawson @mstinalawson (yes, Beyonce's mom) and award-winning artist, consultant and writer Genel Ambrose @genelambrose at the Waco Theater Center @wacotheater in Los Angeles.

WITNESS is a visual art experience asking the question: What do we witness when we see through the eyes of Black women? The show features work by LA-based Black women and non-binary artists who project their vision of the world, society, community, and themselves through their art. This is an immersive exhibit featuring installations, portraiture, and intimately captured moving and still images across mediums. 

This exhibition explores the intersectional vantage point of the Black femme-identifying artist—inviting the viewer to bear witness to what they may not otherwise see on their own. Bey grew up in The Bahamas (New Providence) and now resides and works in Los Angeles, CA as a visual artist and art educator. Bey’s interdisciplinary artwork is an introspective and social critique of American and Bahamian culture, feminism, generational theory, social media, AfroFuturism, AfroSurrealism, post-colonialism and constructs of race within supremacist systems.

Exhibition ends May 27, 2023.

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                      From the Facebook page of Brian Ashing

Hi everyone. Sharing some of my recent portrait paintings. Feel free to contact me or share this post with someone you think may be interested in commissioning a portrait of themselves or a loved one. You can always reach me at 1-868-779-0005 (telephone or WhatsApp) or brianashingart@gmail.com 

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                         Sybil Atteck’s portrait of Althea McNish

                           101 Gallery Woodbrook Trinidad

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~Sexypink~ In October Irenee Show shall be showing at Y Gallery. I had the opportunity to see some of the work beforehand and I cannot wait to see the them again!

                    ........................................................................ "As the primordial keeper of identity, collective memory, and belonging, our environment shifts intermittently between narrator and protagonist in the story of peoples."-Shannon Alonzo on Irénée Shaw's latest body of work

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~SEXYPINK’s top 10 breakout Artists for the decade (2010-2019) These two women’s works leave a lasting impression with me. They both tackle their subject matter, which is part autobiography part personal muse with a fearlessness that comes out of their passion to focus their attention on the blank canvas to tell their personal stories.

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~Sexypink~ Tessa Mars, Haitian Art at its best.

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~Sexypink~ From the Facebook page of Jal Khan....

Went to the current must go to see and buy art exibition in Trinidad and Tobago by local artist Marissa Yung Lee at Horizons Art Gallery.It is a refreshing exibition from the local norm of technical painting of subjects of portraiture studies, fantasy and Trinidad and Tobago cultural diversity coding. She presents subjects from Trinidad and Tobago traditional Carnival to our cultural diversity to the artist fantasy linking to the exibition theme of magical=realism.

What Young Lee brings to the viewing audience is her investigation of the skill of painting the human form, costume and control of light on the subject using different oil painting medium methods.Her works are very reasonably priced even below some local market rates for this type of technical painting which as her first solo exibition are expected only increase significantly. I expect her growth and skill as an visual artist to rapidly advance as she explores her visual voice to speak and share with us.

Congratulations to her as most of her works have already been sold and it's up to you to quickly get the remaining available ones of this progressive artist for your art collection.What look for in this artist?Her investigation of light in paintings.Her subject choices and tight compositions that are linked to and rich in Trinidad and Tobago cultural diversity symbolic encoding.

The artist willingness to investigate and experiment to commit to this form of painting.The possibility of her future deeper exploration of her minds visual creative expression of her subject choices using her developing mastery of the media.

Recommendations Go see this exibition.Support buying local art for love of art and investment in art.Follow and support all local visual artist.

Credits acknowledgmentsArtist Marissa Yung LeeHorizons Art GalleryPhotography by Jalaludin Khan © 2021