Rober­ta Stod­dart’s paint­ings have been de­scribed as brave, dense, bold, thor­ough­ly ex­e­cut­ed, and deeply felt. In­tense and dis­turb­ing, they stim­u­late ques­tions about our col­lec­tive prej­u­dices, our psy­cho­log­i­cal spaces, and our no­tions of be­long­ing. Stod­dart has pub­lished two books, Seam­less Spaces (2000) and TheSto­ry­teller (2007), pro­duced sev­en so­lo ex­hi­bi­tions, and par­tic­i­pat­ed in im­por­tant lo­cal, re­gion­al, and in­ter­na­tion­al group shows. She is the re­cip­i­ent of a Peo­ples’ Choice prize in France and has ex­hib­it­ed at the Wern­er Gallery, Berlin, Ger­many. Born in Ja­maica, she lives and works in Trinidad. Rober­ta Stod­dart will ex­pound on her lat­est body of work, The Tear Catch­er, at 11 am this Sat­ur­day, 20th Oc­to­ber 2018.

The Tear Catch­er Ex­hi­bi­tion con­tin­ues un­til Sat­ur­day 27th Oc­to­ber 2018 .

Everyman by Roberta Stoddart

Abigail Hadeed

REC: What is the cen­tral theme be­hind this body of work?

RS: I find en­thu­si­asm and peace in the search for mean­ing. On­go­ing in­spi­ra­tions for my work are death and fear, re­jec­tion and iso­la­tion, un­re­quit­ed love and loss, dis­il­lu­sion­ment and grief. I find the world a sad place, even with all of its bless­ings. The Tear Catch­er col­lects my tears. 

My fa­ther died in 2014. His ab­sence is a con­stant re­minder of death’s fi­nal­i­ty. Earth to earth, ash­es to ash­es, dust to dust—cre­ma­tion re­turns my fa­ther’s ash­es to the world. I live with the ghost of loss, and with the hope of res­o­lu­tion through love. In the mys­te­ri­ous flow of life, death and loss are our con­stant com­pan­ions. My fa­ther’s ash­es are in­ex­tri­ca­ble from my dark, dusky land­scapes. My dystopi­an land­scapes rep­re­sent in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal wound­ing. Life is hard and of­ten un­fair; yet life al­so gifts us with grace. Spir­i­tu­al heal­ing and trans­for­ma­tion­abound in dis­il­lu­sion­ment, loss, pow­er­less­ness, ac­cep­tance, and griev­ing.

What does your art aim to say to your au­di­ence?

I do not aim to say any­thing to an au­di­ence. I strive to paint for my­self. But in do­ing so, I hope that an au­di­ence will iden­ti­fy with my work, be moved by it, be touched by it, Then, my work comes full cir­cle. In 2008, I cre­at­ed a body of work called Full Moon Mad­ness. “Sleep­walk­ers”, a large nar­ra­tive, ex­plores the main con­cept of Full Moon Mad­ness—that our lim­it­ed con­di­tion­ing puts us to sleep, and we long to awak­en to our au­then­tic selves and ful­fill our po­ten­tial. I con­nect men­tal health with as­pects of my­self, my fam­i­ly, Ja­maican his­to­ry and cul­ture, the Caribbean, and our es­sen­tial iden­ti­ty—the soul.

Lit­er­ary in­spi­ra­tions for “Sleep­walk­ers” are Char­lotte Bronte’s bleak Goth­ic nov­el, Jane Eyre, Jean Rhys’s haunt­ing su­per­nat­ur­al pre­quel, Wide Sar­gas­so Sea, and Michelle Cliff. I paint what I love and fear. My tech­ni­cal prac­tice and sub­ject mat­ter are in­sep­a­ra­bly in­ter­twined, ground­ing and lib­er­at­ing the oth­er in turns. Ho­n­our­ing the tra­di­tion of paint­ing, I push the bound­aries of what I know, ex­per­i­ment­ing with sub­ject mat­ter and tech­nique.

I find en­thu­si­asm and peace in the search for mean­ing. On­go­ing in­spi­ra­tions for my work are death and fear, re­jec­tion and iso­la­tion, un­re­quit­ed love and loss, dis­il­lu­sion­ment and grief. I find the world a sad place, even with all of its bless­ings. The Tear Catch­er col­lects my tears.

The mys­tery of faith—trust­ing good­ness—is life to the heart. I paint with dark colours to sig­ni­fy the ac­tive ex­is­tence of soul re­sid­ing be­neath my aware­ness. In the “Dark Night”, I find that love is my heart’s deep­est de­sire.

Our Stone Age an­ces­tors forged the first black pig­ments from fire, pu­ri­fy­ing char­coal from bone. Black en­dures—soul­ful, fe­cund, mys­ti­cal, rit­u­al­is­tic, sym­bol­ic—resur­gent and eter­nal. Black has se­cret splen­dour, depth and pos­si­bil­i­ty, tra­vers­ing be­tween worlds, con­jur­ing up in­fin­i­ty.

Sleepwalkers by Roberta Stoddart

How has your art evolved over the years?

Striv­ing to cre­ate mean­ing­ful con­nec­tions in my life and in my work is the foun­da­tion of my cre­ativ­i­ty and artis­tic ex­pres­sion. I try to look for God in every­thing. Art is cre­at­ed through us, and by us. God is al­ways in­volved. God is—in every­one, every­thing, every­where; seen and un­seen. When I know that and can feel that, then noth­ing is in­con­se­quen­tial, all crea­tures are sa­cred, and all of life be­comes an op­por­tu­ni­ty to love. The en­tire world is my in­spi­ra­tion. I try to lean in­to what I fear – it is al­ways what I should do next. Step­ping in­to the un­known is how I grow -- al­low­ing my imag­i­na­tion to take prece­dence while I para­dox­i­cal­ly in­sist on truth. Beau­ty is truth, and truth is beau­ty, no mat­ter how seem­ing­ly ug­ly. I try to lis­ten to the world and learn, but I know that I see most clear­ly and holis­ti­cal­ly with my heart. To pos­sess a sense of hu­mor, of the ridicu­lous, is equal­ly es­sen­tial to the cre­ative process.

What is hap­pen­ing in­ter­nal­ly in an artist’s life.