Gillian Cal­iste

It would take Trinida­di­an Karen Sin­clair on­ly a few days in an art class in a mid­dle east­ern coun­try some 12,000 kilo­me­tres from home to re­alise she had artis­tic tal­ent. Her work would come to be a sta­ple of the coun­try's bur­geon­ing art scene.

Ad­ven­ture was in her bones in ear­ly 2011 when Sin­clair de­cid­ed to "make a leap" and an­swer an on­line ad for a job in an uniden­ti­fied mid­dle east­ern coun­try, and hop a plane to the in­ter­view in Cana­da. The move would land her a job in Qatar a few months lat­er.

"I didn't know where I was go­ing, which com­pa­ny, where Qatar was–I think they told me it was Qatar in the in­ter­view–and I end­ed up here and since then I've made the most of it," Sin­clair said with loud laugh­ter as she spoke with Sun­day Guardian via What­sApp call last Tues­day from her res­i­dence in Nu­ai­ja in Qatar's cap­i­tal city of Do­ha.

On­ly mo­ments be­fore, she and this writer re­alised that we had been old class­mates at sec­ondary school in Form Six. Sin­clair wel­comed the rare sound of a fel­low Tri­ni's ac­cent and the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­con­nect.

She is a se­nior an­a­lyst for QatarEn­er­gy, the wife of a Tunisian–Achref Mek­nes­si–and the moth­er of in­fant boys, aged four and three. She showed off her art in a re­cent seg­ment of Quest 2 Qatar an on-the-ground World Cup 2022 cap­sule with Robert Du­mas on CNC3.

Artist and senior analyst Karen Sinclair.

Con­tin­u­ing to re­late how she came to be in Qatar, an Arab coun­try with a pop­u­la­tion close to three mil­lion, Sin­clair said that on hear­ing that she had got­ten the po­si­tion, she wast­ed no time. Al­though a full adult, she called a fam­i­ly meet­ing with her par­ents and sib­lings to ex­plain her de­ci­sion to head to the Mid­dle East.

"I took my younger broth­er (Kevin) for back­ing. He had a more con­vinc­ing way of con­vey­ing things. I didn't even know he was check­ing out sim­i­lar places and think­ing of mov­ing too."

Sin­clair had long been a glo­be­trot­ter, ven­tur­ing to places like Is­rael and Czech Re­pub­lic which some­times wor­ried her par­ents. Need­less to say, she faced an up­hill bat­tle try­ing to get her par­ents on board with her mov­ing to Qatar as they were con­cerned about the strict Is­lam­ic laws in Mid­dle East­ern coun­tries. Nev­er­the­less, they ac­cept­ed her de­ci­sion.

When she first ar­rived in the Mid­dle East­ern coun­try af­ter a 24-hour plus flight, Sin­clair was a lit­tle dis­ori­ent­ed by the sev­en-hour time dif­fer­ence and would ex­pe­ri­ence chal­lenges of get­ting around and learn­ing the lo­ca­tion of ba­sic stores like the su­per­mar­ket for a while.

As she found taxi fares to be high, she soon paid down for a car.

"You be­gin to learn. You have no food re­sem­bling Trinida­di­an food. Every­thing has a dif­fer­ent taste spec­trum, so every­thing was a shock, the tem­per­a­ture was a shock. The peo­ple were speak­ing Eng­lish around me, but per­haps I was in a lit­tle state of con­fu­sion, so I didn't even re­alise they were talk­ing in Eng­lish. I was hear­ing it as Ara­bic."

She fared bet­ter at her work­place since the ma­jor­i­ty of the em­ploy­ees were for­eign­ers like her­self with Eng­lish be­ing the uni­ver­sal lan­guage.

As her dress style was al­ways a bit con­ser­v­a­tive even back home in T&T, she felt com­fort­able with the dress rules. She has nev­er en­coun­tered any is­sues–as long as one is re­spect­ful and dress­es in pro­fes­sion­al work wear cov­er­ing the top of the body and knees, she ex­plained, adding that some non-Qatari women wore capris to the mall with a nice top that cov­ered the chest and part of the arms.

With its ul­tra­mod­ern ar­chi­tec­ture, the coun­try has a ris­ing art and film cul­ture, and a num­ber of cul­tur­al vil­lages with ex­hi­bi­tions where Sin­clair of­ten found her­self ad­mir­ing the works of oth­ers. So in June 2013, tak­ing ad­van­tage of the free time she had on af­ter­noons af­ter a 6:30 am to 2:30 pm work day, she vis­it­ed a stu­dio rec­om­mend­ed by a friend and in­quired about art class­es.

At the stu­dio, she was told by the in­struc­tor Ma­soud to re­turn the fol­low­ing day with art ma­te­r­i­al.

"So I went back the fol­low­ing day af­ter work with a bag with every­thing imag­in­able. The man start to laugh. He could bare­ly speak Eng­lish. I had a sketch pad, I had pen­cils, wa­ter­colours, acrylics, oil paint...every­thing. He told me to start by draw­ing with pen­cils and he put a bot­tle for me to draw," she said.

Giv­en in­struc­tions to do more draw­ings for home­work, Sin­clair re­turned to the class the next day with her sketch­pad filled with sketch­es of every­thing she could find in her house. Laugh­ter again en­sued from her in­struc­tor. In­di­cat­ing to him that she was ea­ger to be­gin learn­ing how to paint, he gave her a can­vas. She tried paint­ing with oils with­out ap­ply­ing lin­seed oil and oth­er sol­vents, once again to the amuse­ment of the in­struc­tor.

“Young Qatari Girl”–Oil on canvas by Karen Sinclair.

Her first paint­ing at the end of the week was "La­dy on the Rock" based on a pho­to of her­self on va­ca­tion in St Vin­cent. Dur­ing the process, how­ev­er, Sin­clair doubt­ed her­self and felt un­sure of what she was do­ing. It was on­ly when Ma­soud asked her to step out­side and ob­serve her paint­ing through the room's glass door that she had a rev­e­la­tion.

"When I looked, I got shiv­ers, goose­bumps. I had been so close to the can­vas that I did not see that it had ac­tu­al­ly be­come a pic­ture. I couldn't be­lieve that I ac­tu­al­ly did that. I was just putting every­thing I saw from the pho­to in colours and form," she re­called.

Told that she had paint­ed the piece like some­one who had ex­pe­ri­ence, she said she re­alised that it was some­thing that could have on­ly come from God.

God worked again, she said, when the pres­i­dent and CEO of the Qatar Fine Arts So­ci­ety (QFA) no­ticed her paint­ing at Ma­soud's stu­dio and asked her to join the So­ci­ety. She start­ed at­tend­ing their ex­hi­bi­tions, com­pe­ti­tions, and oth­er events, build­ing up her port­fo­lio along the way. One of the first non-Arab peo­ple to be part of the So­ci­ety, she re­mains an ac­tive mem­ber.

As a par­tic­i­pant in the QFA's an­nu­al Re­al­is­tic Fine Arts com­pe­ti­tion which usu­al­ly fea­tures about 50 in­ter­na­tion­al artists, Sin­clair copped sec­ond place in 2017 for her piece "Souq Waqif" which de­picts Qatari men rid­ing Ara­bi­an hors­es through a mar­ket­place called Souq Waqif. Her most re­cent work, in­clud­ing her first piece in soft pas­tel "Bele Dancer", was shown in Sep­tem­ber at the Qatar In­ter­na­tion­al Art Fes­ti­val (QI­AF).

Karen Sinclair stands in front of her panel pieces “Wall Art on Dhow Festival”.

Sin­clair is al­so part of MAP In­ter­na­tion­al where her "Bele Dancer" and "The Café" were re­cent­ly on ex­hib­it.

Though Sin­clair's pre­ferred medi­um is oil which gives her the flex­i­bil­i­ty to make her pieces dy­nam­ic, with some even giv­ing a some­what 3D ef­fect, she has al­so done a few wa­ter­colour and acrylic pieces and has re­cent­ly be­come fond of soft pas­tels. She main­ly ex­plores Caribbean por­trai­ture and Caribbean and Ara­bic fig­ures in their nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment. The mo­tion of Arab gar­ments has al­so coloured her can­vas­es. She has start­ed delv­ing in­to the cul­ture of Caribbean in­dige­nous peo­ples as well.

As tem­per­a­tures have been known to rise as high as a mind-blow­ing 50 de­grees Cel­sius in Do­ha, Sin­clair pass­es on paint­ing out­doors un­til the win­ter months, opt­ing in­stead for cre­at­ing her pieces in a room in her home, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter her boys fall asleep.

"When I come home, some­times I'm tired, but the minute I pick up a paint­brush when the chil­dren fall asleep, all the tired­ness goes. I just love it so much, it's just some­thing you can't stop. Some­times I'm al­ler­gic to the oils and the smells...itchy skin, swollen face and I just re­cov­er and I go again. It's a form of re­lease, peace," she laughed.

Karen Sinclair and her boys.

Re­flect­ing on her abil­i­ty to build a fam­i­ly and on how many choirs and per­form­ing arts groups she had failed to make, Sin­clair ob­served that every­thing in her life had come in God's tim­ing.

"I didn't know I had a tal­ent. He knew. I tried mu­sic, I tried danc­ing...re­mem­ber in Con­vent I was the on­ly per­son to get thrown out of the choir? I think the on­ly per­son was me, she said, burst­ing in­to up­roar­i­ous laugh­ter.

"So I at­tribute this tal­ent to God, no­body else."

In her grow­ing years, Sin­clair had al­ways doo­dled and done draw­ings and ad­mired the art­work of oth­ers, but she had no for­mal train­ing. She trans­ferred from Tu­na­puna Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary to St Joseph's Con­vent, St Joseph, in Sixth Form where she stud­ied her then-favourite sub­ject Ge­og­ra­phy, as well as, Sci­ences. Re­peat­ing A-Lev­els at El Do­ra­do Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive, she did her bach­e­lor's de­gree in Agri­cul­ture and a mas­ter's in Pro­duc­tion at UWI, and lat­er an MBA from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lin­coln through the School of Ac­count­ing and Man­age­ment. Dur­ing a phase prompt­ed by heavy ad­dic­tion to the Law and Or­der TV se­ries on NBC, Sin­clair said she picked up Law, go­ing as far as a Mas­ter's in Law from the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia in lat­er years.

She al­ways be­lieved she would get in­to hy­dro­ge­ol­o­gy which deals with the ir­ri­ga­tion and drainage of wa­ter un­der the ground. How­ev­er, her pro­fes­sion­al jour­ney has tak­en her from agri­cul­tur­al re­search at CARIRI to en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment at Ca­roni (1975) Ltd, op­er­a­tional au­dit­ing, qual­i­ty au­dit­ing and risk as­sess­ment at NGC, and then in­to risk man­age­ment deal­ing with en­vi­ron­ment and reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance, safe­ty and op­er­a­tions at BP Trinidad.

Asked how she was able to take on so many pur­suits, Sin­clair ad­mit­ted that her moth­er would of­ten ask the same ques­tion and her broth­er Kevin–who him­self has lived in Qatar with his fam­i­ly for about five years–would al­ways tease her about it.

"I just do what makes me hap­py," she chuck­led.

Part of the joy comes from blend­ing her Caribbean her­itage with her hus­band's Tunisian cul­ture to teach her boys. Sit­u­at­ed in North Africa, Tunisia is a coun­try of about 12 mil­lion which has a blend of Arab and Berber (in­dige­nous peo­ples of that re­gion) cul­tures. Her hus­band al­so came to Qatar to work and they mar­ried in 2016. His Eng­lish has im­proved a lot, but her Ara­bic needs some work, Sin­clair said, jok­ing that her old­er son who has start­ed kinder­garten prob­a­bly knows more of the lan­guage than her.

She plans to bring the chil­dren to T&T soon. Her hus­band loved the lo­cal beach­es and scenery but stuck to pineap­ples, bar­be­qued foods, and KFC which he had for the first time on a vis­it here. She en­joyed the Berber coun­try area he was from which she said was rem­i­nis­cent of the Ja­maican coun­try­side, as well as their lamb cous­cous, served as lamb in gravy with olives and car­rots atop spiced cous­cous.

As for the at­mos­phere in Do­ha re­gard­ing the World Cup cur­rent­ly en­ter­ing its fi­nal week, Sin­clair said it was "su­per", re­count­ing the one mil­lion-strong crowd that showed up for the fes­tiv­i­ties in a park near her home some days ago. Though she and her fam­i­ly try to avoid the crowds, she said they had been to Ger­many vs Cos­ta Ri­ca and Por­tu­gal vs Ko­rea ear­li­er match­es.

"It was spec­tac­u­lar! The sta­di­ums are nice, the at­mos­phere...it's re­al­ly some­thing to ex­pe­ri­ence," she said.

Karen Sinclair's first painting “Lady on the Rock”–oil on canvas.