#sexypink/Trinidad and Tobago Artists

[sexypinkon]

                                 S    E    X    Y     P     I    N      K

                   Cynthia McLean  11 Sept 1941 - 13 Aug 2022 

From the Facebook page of Savanna Trinidad some beautiful writing for  beautiful person.

We have lost a fine artist.  The beauty, vibrancy and imagination in Cynthia’s paintings made her collectors see and feel her warmth, love and spontaneity for what she did best. Her creations varied from different techniques using tools and each masterpiece portrays exceptional colour, rhythm and mood.   

Cynthia was so proud of her Carnival subjects especially her pan paintings, landscapes  , the olden days of cane farming and cocoa houses , seascapes of Mayaro and Blanchisseuse and old humble homes. 

These works are hung at the Central Bank, the National Museum , churches and private collections locally and internationally.   Cynthia, I will always remember you as a radiant spirit , so warm , forever hopeful , humble and always smiling and passionate about each new creation. Your paintings will forever stand out on our walls. 

You have left the art world a far more interesting place. Your work shines outright and your creativity shows us that being different is just simply awesome !

 “ Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing “ Marc Chagall.

[galleryyuhself]

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

..............................

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.

.................................

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

[sexypinkon]

Sexypink - Jemima Charles - Trinidad and Tobago

Jemima Charles - King Scarlet Ibis Lamp - 2021 Hand-printed on Japanese paper

[sexypinkon]

Sexypink - Christopher Cozier is at MOMA.

[sexypinkon]

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

[sexypinkon]

Sexypink - TODAY

Join us this Wednesday for a lecture presentation by Keith Atteck on the Biography & Works of Sybil Atteck on International Women’s Day, Wednesday March 8, 2023. Key components of this presentation include Sybil Atteck’s significant artworks, her developmental periods, and her interactions with local and international artists and personalities.  

See it here-: https://fb.watch/j8wExF_aAa/?mibextid=j8LeHn

[sexypinkon]

                                       S   E    X    Y    P    I    N    K

                                           Seen on Facebook....

Liberty Mission Accomplished ... this is all that’s left of the Althea McNish limited collection; it sold like hot cakes with many designs no longer available)

[sexypinkon]

                                   S    E     X     Y     P    I     N     K

           Trinidad and Tobago Artist Christopher Cozier @ Documenta 15

[sexypinkon]

                                    S   E    X    Y    P    I    N    K

                                       Luis Vasquez La Roche

Subversive Media: Materiality and Power, on view in @secondstreetgallery Main Gallery.  Curated by @hccurates 

[sexypinkon]

                                    S   E  X   Y   P   I   N   K

                    Brianna Mc Carthy - Through to the surface

[sexypinkon]

Sexypink - G A Gardner sells dreams.

[sexypinkon]

Sexypink - Five in show.

[sexypinkon]

Sexypink - Museum day Dey!

Sexypink - Free workshops

[sexypinkon]

Sexypink - Textile Artist Rose L Williams upcoming exhibition curated by Adeline Gregoire.

[sexypinkon]

Sexypink - A great initiative for so many Caribbean Artists working in this media.

[sexypinkon]

Sexypink - One of many exhibitions this carnival.