Joanna is an emotive painter, and one can even say, an action
painter. She is in love with paint, with colour and with rolling and
manipulating the medium to speak for her. An English major student,
Joanna's literary side kicks in on the canvas. Poetry and music, but
mostly personal confrontation, uncertainty, celebration and
exploration are the mainsprings of her paintings.
She has experimented with as many different media (pen and ink, water
colours, acrylics, pastels, strings and ribbons, cardboard) as with
many different styles before focusing on semi-abstract
oil-on-canvases. Joanna's job as a freelance features writer has also
injected excitement in her work, as much as her struggles and
celebrations with the people in her life.
She recalls buying a book on Picasso' Blue Period when a language
learning student in Martinique. "I love the colour blue and most of
the times I start from a blue place."
Dance, theater, music, film , literature, beauty and relationships are celebrated on her canvases like the pieces entitled Friendship (above) and Blob of a Flower (below).
The Librarian of UWImedia, she has also produced two mini
documentaries at TTN, one of which was accepted as her thesis,
entitled "A Psychological Profile of Trinidad's Carnival and Folklore
Characters."
Joanna has deferred her thesis to go on an exchange program to York
University, Toronto to study Multimedia Arts.
Anthony spent one year as an art exchange student at York
University which turned out an unforgettable experience for him.
Though he has already lived and worked in New York, it was his stay
at York University that crystallized his serious approach to art and
helped him to shape an informed and critical perspective.
He notes that Trinidadians do not have the same broad reverence for
art that Canadians have, excepting for their Carnival and other
ritual arts. There, he found the total art environment to be more
active and accessible, and as a result, infused him with more
confidence in his own work.
His Abstract Expressionist painting, First Fall is a Trini's reaction
to the wonder of Autumn. But he draws more on the polemics of the
human figure in his "The Body of Art: Art of the Body", where he
plays with the male figure, questioning the "perfect" body and
juxtaposing it with Christ's own.
Anthony was also a dedicated member of UWImedia, and at York, had to produce a short video spot for his Interdisciplinary course.
Rosemarie wants to be a film-maker. She wants to own her own small
production company and to use that medium as her own special form of
expression; to tell her own stories.
The UWI art experience solidified her former interest and expertise
in the film and video arena, and as the President of UWImedia, she
was able to initiate a vibrant following into her own love of the
medium. She engaged her experiences with the TV station AVM, with
Banyan, with Tony Hall, Christopher Laird, Bruce Paddington and
Anthony Maharaj, all of whom are professionals in the industry.
But for her, the experiments with drawing and painting, however, were
a big step. With no formal art training before, she recalls her first
3 hour drawing class as "tortuous," and considers herself courageous
for sticking it out.
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Acrylic on paper |
Plaster of Paris, razor blades, pins |
The Visual Arts program opened her to the media of acrylics, wire, metals and Plaster of Paris. Her Untitled is a round plaster piece with formations created by razor blades and pins.
Perhaps those painful drawing and painting classes sharpened her zeal for the film medium. It is the same ripping dedication that all artists feel. Rosemarie hopes to work in the local Media circuit to totally understand the crafts of film and video before she can begin to manipulate them herself.(Of all the modern art forms she calls film the most tortuous.) She may not be an oil painter, but her canvas will soon be the film strip.
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