The land the sea and the sand.

Appparently I am a wannabe Bajan.

Have a look at the exhibition at Gallery of Caribbean Art.

The Land the Sea and the Hoi Polloi

The Gallery of Caribbean Art in Speightstown Barbados has graciously invited us to do another exhibit.

Faithful stalwart of a gallerist, Hazel Ann Mahy Batson has stayed with us through thick and thin, so that now after 20 years we can proudly say that we have shown 10 times in this lovely gallery.

If you love the paintings as much as I do, and want to take one to your home, just click here for

Gallery Of Caribbean Art.  They will make it so easy for you, and they ship world wide. 

Thanks for the love and loyalty all these decades.  Where would we be without you?

So where is Susan now? And what has she been painting.
Getting over the slowness of the pandemic has been hard on all of us. After all, we are not
making bread. And we can’t eat our paintings or wear them.
However if we are talking about the therapy needed get through that difficult time, I think the
artists were the luckiest of all.
Our usual is to be in the studio alone, working, meditating, correcting, and spilling paint. The
difference was that we weren’t getting paid for our efforts, because we couldn’t invite someone
over to see the work. So we didn’t get immediate feed back. We didn’t get that warm feeling
when someone connects with you through your painting.
We made plans, knowing they could be easily thrown out. One show I was organizing had three
dates pushed back. Eventually it was exhibited, but neither the artist nor the curator got to go
and see it. That’s not rewarding.
Surprisingly, we all kept busy. We all had hope in the future. We trusted that the path we follow
will still have some good for us along the way. That’s the thing about artists, we live in a fool’s
paradise. Happily.
This series is name “The land, the sea” and the hoi polloi”. The Hoi Polloi are the everyday
common people. In our case, the sailors, the fishermen, the farmers, the vegetable sellers.
The salt of the earth people who have always taken things in stride. We have Kick em Jenny,
our local undersea volcano rumbling at the moment. No one is panicking. We willl take it as it
comes.When the volcano in St. Vincent blew, we saved the ash to make some multi media art.
This series of work is deceptively simple. You take a glance and you think you know. Its a boat.
But did you realize the wooden boat is almost 100 years old. Built by hand, the hardwood
sourced from local trees. The caulking between the planks has been artfully pounded in by the
builder, who just wouldn’t trust that someone else would do a good enough job. The canvas
sails are recycled over and over, mending the rips, and not easily discarded. The waterline is
painted on by intuition, and when the boat is pulled into the water, the line hits the mark every
time. I can only imagine that the boat builder feels that same sense of satisfaction that we artist
feel when we complete that last stroke on the painting.
Come what may we continue to paint. We like it. Ok, true confession.
We love it.

Hope to see you on Sunday afternoon,

Susan

PS exhibition continues through 30 March.

Feel free to forward invitation

 

Yes we are still in it!

Woefully absent from this platform, my extreme apologies!  Seems like Instagram and Facebook have dominated the posts for a long while, and it is time to remedy that!

Just a little timeline news.  In 2022 Susan led the team of artists from Grenada to the pavilion at Biennale di Venezia to show off our collective work on Shakespeare Mas. You can get more details from grenadavenice.org/archive It was fabulously successful with over 100,000 people visiting. 

Here is my contribution in painting --

The Grenada Contemporary came off in Late October of 2022 at Art House 473 -- see the catalog here.

And forward ever, the Grenada Pavilion for the  18th Architectural Biennale di Venezia, which you can see at Grenadavenice.org

Teaching a class today!  Professional Practices for Artists

Sorry this is so brief -- follow on Instagram, @susanmains. Facebook susanmains

More to come!

The gifts of the pandemic.

Having exhibited at Gallery of Caribbean art just about every two years since its inception. Susan Mains wasn’t going to let a little thing like a world-wide pandemic stop her from a regular appearance.

A Caribbean person with historic roots in Barbados, (think 1648) her artistic history encompasses Dominica, Barbados, and Grenada.   Her island home in Grenada is no stranger to conflict — worker riots in the 50’s, a rocky 1974 independence from Great Britain, a fiery revolution and invasion by a super power in the late 70’ early 80’s, a devastating Hurricane Ivan in 2004 that destroyed her home and studio, and now, this pandemic that froze us all in time for almost two years.  

The response to all this? Art takes centre stage.  In her quiet studio in St Paul’s Grenada, she has been assembling a body of work that honours that which never fails us — the resilience of the land and sea and of course the women who populate our lives and strengthen us.  Her characteristic bright colored paintings vibrate with impressionistic strokes of color, laid down with a pallet knife or quick moving brush.  That intermediary space between the colors, where the complimentary grays appear are her favorite passages.  Susan says, “ Our lives are made up of passing moments, those incidences that you only appreciate fully when you look back at them.  These paintings are metaphors for those moments”.

Thanks to the internet, she was also able to accomplish another whole volunteer job during these quiet days.  Grenada participated as a national pavilion in la Biennale di Venezia Architecture Exhibition for the first time May through November of 2021.  The pavilion showed Grenada’s new House of Parliament, which was designed by Bryan Bullen, a son of the soil.  Only the faithful crew on the ground in Venice made this possible, because of travel restrictions, no one could go. The Biennale had over 300,000 visitors, inspite of the rigid Covid protocols.  It was the only outpost for Grenada in the heart of Europe during this bleak time. 

Then there was Expo 2020 in Dubai.  (actually totally in 2021) Susan also volunteered to curate the art that Grenada presented as part of its display.  By December of 2021 travel had eased enough that she actually travelled to see it! Several artists from Grenada had their first opportunity to show internationally at this event.  The expo will continue through the end of March.

Further flexing her curatorial muscle, she is now organizing the Grenada Pavilion for the 59th Biennale di Venezia, set to open in Venice in April.  The Cypher Art Collective of Grenada will show the result of more than a year of zoom meetings, portraying the very interesting ritual of Shakespeare Mas in Carriacou.  It is a huge task, but the intangible rewards are immeasurable. 

Susan says, “In this time of tremendous change in the Caribbean, we need to stand our ground and tell our own stories.  Heritage is more than a buzz word for accessing funding for projects—it is the living of our lives well as we remember our ancestors”. 

Susan will be at the Gallery of Caribbean Art on 17th Feb in the afternoon from 1 pm to 7 pm. Stop in for a chat!  The show continues through the end of February.

Click here to see some of the pics! Or point your phone at it!

We are open at Expo2020!

After many many months of making plans, making art, making shipping crates, making ourselves crazy, the Grenada pavilion is open in Dubai today!

We hope to share pics with you soon, but in the mean time, meet the Artists!

Couldn't have done this without my colleague Asher Mains, and without the team on the ground in Dubai. Much appreciation to all who worked, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Business of Grenada.

Shanta Cox--you are a rock star!  Stay with us--more info to come. 

Meet the Artists