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Musicians Asher Mains and

                    Andrew Woodvine....inspired!

“Treasures "

The Caribbean, and Grenada in particular, is a place where many great artists have passed through.  Certainly when Pissaro, the father of impressionism, sailed on a schooner from St. Thomas to Venezuela, Grenada would have been one of the stops.  And not too far away in Martinique, Gauguin found a bit of paradise before moving on to Tahiti and establishing himself there.

More recently, the British choice of representation in the 2009 Venice Biennale, Steve McQueen, born in the UK of Grenadian parents, used Grenada as the staging ground for his now famous “Carib’s Leap” film.  However, after his grandmother died, he said of Grenada, “I don’t feel a part of it at all.”

I think the passing artist who most succinctly summarized the charm of Grenada and the Caribbean was the American artist, Romare Bearden.  He visited Grenada and many of the islands in the 1960s, even as late as 1971.  He said, “Definitely, each place that you are in, I think, affects you in some way or another.  And an island like Grenada would seem to be a perfect setting for Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’--  it’s hard to differentiate what is sea and what is sky - they all seem to be blended together out of sea and air, this marvelous island.  Certainly, if I lived there for any length of time, I know it would affect the way I work."

He painted at least three paintings during his visits—alas, none of them remain in Grenada. 

Having read this pronouncement, I can verify—staying and living makes all the difference in the way one works.  At first glance, the colours may all seem bright and verdant, the highlights bright, the shadows intense. But as the seasons of the year go by, the subtlety of changing flowers and leaves reveals itself.  The atmosphere of the air gives a different blue—more clarity in dry season, more heaviness in the wet.  And if the smell of the air could be encapsulated in the stroke of the brush, surely the cool Christmas breezes would give yet another palette of expression like no other. The aroma of spice even finds its way into the air even when the bush is being cleared for planting.  If that could be painted!

How does one paint the sound of the snap of a sail, or the sea beating up the face of a rock,or the creak of a wooden boat as it hurtles toward its destiny of feeding people with a good catch of fish.

In this past year where economic reality has pared away like a knife everything but the essentials, my choice is to look to our beautiful environment for inspiration. Our treasure in the Caribbean cannot be stored in a bank or a stock certificate.  It is found in the green richness of the mountain, the diamond sparkle on the sea, and the steely resilience of a much tested people. 

So as for artists who only pass through, I am not one.  I am an artist who stays, and I am all the richer for it.   “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:2

Susan Mains, February 2010