Shel­don Os­borne

Artist Jun­ya Craig­well and the Caribbean Pres­tige Foun­da­tion (CPF) launched an ex­hi­bi­tion–The Joy of Pur­pose–at De Gallery, Wood­ford Street, New­town, on June 15. The launch was at­tend­ed by artists, of­fi­cials of the CPF, Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh and Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Sta­cy Roop­nar­ine.

Craig­well's paint­ing ca­reer start­ed when he was ap­pren­ticed to a lo­cal ve­hi­cle as­sem­bly plant to learn met­al fin­ish­ing and paint­ing skills.

Years lat­er, Craig­well was hired by the or­gan­i­sa­tion now known as CPF to de­sign stage back­drops for the an­nu­al In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch fi­nals, start­ing his long and con­tin­u­ing re­la­tion­ship with CPF. He al­so worked close­ly with the mu­si­cal artistes com­pet­ing in the CPF's So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion, and his work be­came part of each artiste's stage pre­sen­ta­tion. The self-taught artist's work is fa­mil­iar to most trav­ellers us­ing City Gate: He is the artist who paint­ed The Last Train, an event im­mor­talised in the ca­lyp­so Last Train to San Fer­nan­do. This paint­ing of the Trinidad Gov­ern­ment Rail­way's last trip was done in 1998, and is on dis­play at the west­ern en­trance of the old train sta­tion, now known as City Gate.

With­in art cir­cles, Craig­well is bet­ter known as the artist who paint­ed por­traits of some of the biggest names in the so­ca world. His work with the So­ca Monarch artistes start­ed a process that led to the com­mis­sion­ing of the Roy­al Col­lec­tion by CPF chair­man William Munro. This col­lec­tion con­sists of So­ca Monarch win­ners from 1993 to 2008 as they per­formed their win­ning songs on stage. The ex­hi­bi­tion–The Joy of Pur­pose–com­pris­es more than 40 pieces in oil, acrylic, chalk-and-pas­tel, and mixed medi­um. The ma­jor­i­ty of pieces are on sale ei­ther as sin­gle pieces or col­lec­tions, with prints avail­able on or­der. The ex­hi­bi­tion con­tin­ues un­til Ju­ly 15.

For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion, Craig­well can be con­tact­ed at 750-5097.