Lethe

Painting for me is my other half,
the part that completes me allowing me to be whole.
Every painting for me is a struggle of intellectual process into self-discovery.
My craft aims to show the world my being.
That is, how I percieve the chaotic order unfolding before me.


It is my belief that as a people we largely take things for granted,
including the reality we perceive, or think we perceive.
These perceptions are then confirmed through the senses we think we have.
Thus, the reality we delude ourselves into believing is literally before our eyes.

Our eyes are the symbol of our consciousness and awareness,
the tool with which I ply my craft.
The single eye is the center of the visible world.
All appearances of reality converge on the vanishing point of infinity.
The visible world is then a mental product and projection
of our social, mental, environmental, conditioning and education,
inadvertently bestowed upon us by the fortune
(or misfortune as the case may be) of our birth and upbringing.
Therefore, our perception filters our sight.
This is not true sight.

I believe awareness is the source of true sight,
and all true creativity is located in the act of awareness.
The brain juxtaposes three dimensional objects.
There is not one image of the world in one's brain.
We subjectively control our picture of the world
through seeing much that is truly invisible-
and seeing only what is prioritized by perception.
This should not be.

The power of perception is infinitely flexible.
and can serve the mind in any way the mind chooses.
Painting reconstitutes this perception,
by the individuality and originality of the marks made on canvas.

As a young Caribbean Artist,
one's paintings are often overlooked in favor of the older artists.
There is a suffocation of fixed ideas,
of transcending the impact of the colonial experience
through splatter paint,and carefully marketed,
fictitious ideologies of ethereal pastel flavored gingerbread houses.
It is no wonder that art does not sell in this Caribbean country,
with such a profusion of "perceptions" of Pan Yards,
Carnival, rural squalor and splendor.

A dispossessed, multicultural, body of people cannot claim artistic repatriation...
for the art must represent the now...
relating to all those who are open minded..
If the artist's duty is to society then I must represent the artist's world now.
I live in this global time...
with all the concerns of my craft having to compete against the computers scalpel.
I cannot wallow (as our treasured elders) in the archaic ideas,
which are still an integral part of the craft.
These beautiful representational works,
by people who are simply fettered with their own minds...

The mind does not normally dwell upon abstractions
for it prefers the concreteness of its illusive reality based on its "known five senses".
The world of "in here" is meant to flow into and merge with the one "out there".
There is an invisible connection between you and everything.

A wise man once said:
"If you exclude every part of a human being;
that can be viewed under microscope,nothing remains.
We are everything and everything is within us,
We are woven into the scheme of the universe"
We must be aware of this in order to see.

The painting process goes hand in hand with my observations,
hopes, dreams, ideas, feelings and fears as I apply layers of thin,
to translucent, to opaque glazes of acrylic on canvas
achieving a build-up of colour that is richly emotive,
and intricately, fascinatingly complex.
I capture moments in totality,
with a unique perception of its modern spatial qualities and dynamics.
I document,
to transcend the passage of time
with records life as I see it and live it.

So then as you view the paintings,
it is my hope that you become aware through any particular sense.
When you feel this,
keep it in and let yourself become weightless beyond what you think and see.
See as if for the first time an ordinary object or a beautiful person.

" Look steadily into this instant, my awareness.
For one instant is eternity,and eternity is the now.
When you see through this one instant,
you see through the one that sees."