Va­lerie Bel­grave's art for the peo­ple (a pho­to mem­oir) is a new book by the artist her­self which is due for re­lease in De­cem­ber. Writ­ten in the first per­son, it is a unique tes­ti­mo­ny of the paths trav­elled by this well-known artist and writer, and a rare glimpse in­to the rai­son d'être of her many do­ings and achieve­ments-enough to fill 132 glossy pages. If there was ever a year in which fate seemed to be ask­ing us to pay at­ten­tion to the greats among us be­fore they are all gone, it was this year, 2011. One can't help but feel that this book is part salve to ease a lit­tle of the pain of our loss­es, and part sign­post show­ing us the di­rec­tion in which we ought to be head­ing.

For it is be­com­ing clear that we must start doc­u­ment­ing the achieve­ments of our achiev­ers and do­ing so in ways that are ac­ces­si­ble to wide cross-sec­tions of our peo­ple while these artists are still around to clar­i­fy and ex­plain their sto­ries. Bel­grave writes with a re­fresh­ing open­ness and frank­ness which should be im­por­tant to stu­dents and art lovers but al­so to the gen­er­al pub­lic as well. Be­neath her ca­su­al­ness and touch­es of hu­mour, there still lies the ex­pe­ri­enced writer who in­stinc­tive­ly brings to the text an en­gag­ing sense of dra­ma that holds the read­er's at­ten­tion.

You ac­tu­al­ly get caught up in her in­fec­tious ex­cite­ment about her work, in her "dar­ing do" ap­proach, in her al­most care­free in­di­vid­u­al­ism and in her par­tic­u­lar phi­los­o­phy. She writes with the au­thor­i­ty of one sure of her con­vic­tions and, of course, noth­ing is as in­fec­tious as self-con­fi­dence. Far from be­ing ego-cen­tred, the book reads like a friend­ly, un­in­hib­it­ed con­ver­sa­tion with this mul­ti-tal­ent­ed daugh­ter of the soil who has, in fact, a great deal to boast about. Her cred­its range from batiks that went all the way to the BBC's Clothes Show, to a well-loved nov­el that sold like "hot cakes" and that is used at sev­er­al uni­ver­si­ties, to a play that got rave re­views here and in Ja­maica, to one-woman shows where her paint­ings sold out on open­ing nights.

There are sev­er­al themes that run through the mem­oir. In one that adds a sur­pris­ing twist to the norm, she traces her jour­ney from re­al­ism in high school (St Joseph's Con­vent, San Fer­nan­do), to ab­stract art at uni­ver­si­ty (Con­cor­dia in Mon­tre­al), and then slow­ly back to re­al­ism once she re­turned to Trinidad. Fas­ci­nat­ing! Strik­ing too, is her self-mo­ti­vat­ed re­liance on in­spi­ra­tion ap­proach. "Hav­ing no am­bi­tions to pro­tect, I most­ly thought of my­self as a ves­sel ready to re­ceive di­rec­tion on what to do and more times than not, on how to do it. In­tense at­ten­tion and hu­mil­i­ty were my great­est teach­ers," she ex­plains.

Print­ed and pub­lished lo­cal­ly, by "Jou­vay Press", the prod­uct's ex­cel­lence cer­tain­ly tes­ti­fies to the com­ing of age of our lo­cal pub­lish­ing and print­ing in­dus­try. For this is a "cof­fee-ta­ble style, pic­ture book" as the re­leas­es for it pro­claim. Pic­tures out­num­ber text. There is a wealth of colour­ful pho­tographs of Bel­grave's work from child­hood to her most re­cent paint­ing that was fea­tured in the Na­tion­al Women's ex­hi­bi­tion held ear­li­er this year at the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um. Beau­ti­ful mod­els peo­ple the batik sec­tion.

Pho­tographs of au­di­ences and friends pro­lif­er­ate, as does news­pa­per clip­pings; the lat­ter in­ter­est­ing­ly, far from in­trud­ing, giv­ing a sense of val­i­da­tion to the text. I hap­pen to know that the lay­out was per­son­al­ly done by her son and own­er of Who Graph­ics Ltd, Che­nier, so it's no won­der that the book isn't on­ly about art but is a work of art it­self. It is not in­signif­i­cant that the artist's name is in this book's ti­tle. Bel­grave isn't claim­ing to de­fine "peo­ple's art", on­ly her ver­sion of it. And who is to say that she isn't en­ti­tled to such a claim? Some among us still re­mem­ber her name as be­ing syn­ony­mous with the strug­gle for change and a new, peo­ple-pow­ered dis­pen­sa­tion. And where art is con­cerned, she has been a pi­o­neer of batik as a re­lat­able art form, a pi­o­neer of qual­i­ty pop­u­lar lit­er­a­ture, and one of the first lo­cal fem­i­nist play­wrights with her play "Night of the Wolf", to name on­ly a few of her firsts. Not to be for­got­ten are her paint­ings.

The land­scapes done with­out the help of pho­tog­ra­phy, which she de­scribes as "fan­ta­sy-like, ro­man­ti­cised, emo­tive in na­ture", her peo­ple-paint­ings, most­ly done "mon­u­men­tal-style" show­ing the grandeur and im­por­tance of our peo­ple. This lim­it­ed edi­tion book is a rare gem, some­thing that you don't see enough of in these parts.