Ac­cord­ing to our Trinidad cre­ole, a Macafouchette is a meal made from the left­overs of oth­er meals. (And of course, we can’t for­get the catchy Parang dit­ty Macafouchette by Rem­bunc­tion).

Just as mul­ti­ple por­tions from pre­vi­ous meals can cre­ate a tasty pot, the same prin­ci­ple ap­plies to this pre-hol­i­day as­sort­ment of orig­i­nal pieces for this ex­hi­bi­tion. Hal­cian's affin­i­ty for all things Tri­ni lends it­self eas­i­ly to the Macafouchette de­scrip­tion, since this eclec­tic com­bi­na­tion of new and pre­vi­ous works come to­geth­er in a unique­ly colour­ful neo pop mix.

The ex­hi­bi­tion opens on Fri­day, 2nd No­vem­ber 2018, 6:00pm-9:00pm at the Un­corked Wines & Spir­its and con­tin­ues un­til the 17th Novermber. Dai­ly hours are Mon­day to Fri­day 11:00am-6:00pm, and Sat­ur­day 11:00am-4:00pm.

Talk about Macafouchette, what is it all about?

First off, I want to say a huge thank you to the Fash­ion Arch and Un­corked Wines and Spir­its Ltd for host­ing me and my lit­tle Macafouchette, and I am re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to shar­ing some good vibes with this ex­hib­it.

Well, near­ly every Tri­ni should know what a macafouchette is, which is mak­ing a meal from left­overs and nine times out of ten, that macafouchette is the sweet­est tast­ing com­bo. I chose that ti­tle be­cause in all the stress and tough times that we’re all ex­pe­ri­enc­ing right now, a lot of us are hav­ing to make some­thing out of next to noth­ing to keep us go­ing. So, for this ex­hi­bi­tion I took that prin­ci­ple and put to­geth­er a col­lec­tion of work that con­tains paint­ings from pre­vi­ous years, a few un­framed pieces on can­vas board and new pieces that I have been work­ing on for the past few months, all orig­i­nals. It's go­ing to be a tru­ly eclec­tic and colour­ful neo nop mix.

Al­so, in the wake of the re­cent flood­ing dis­as­ter that hit us, I’m cur­rent­ly work­ing on a spe­cial piece, the pro­ceeds of which will be do­nat­ed to Habi­tat for Hu­man­i­ty to as­sist them with get­ting ma­te­ri­als to help re­build homes for those who lost theirs. The paint­ing is based on a pho­to I saw on­line of three men lit­er­al­ly 'bussin' a lime on a piece of board float­ing in the flood wa­ters. I mean, they had rum and a bowl with ice and all on the board, and I laughed so hard see­ing how they were mak­ing the best out of a re­al­ly ter­ri­ble sit­u­a­tion us­ing some Tri­ni hu­mor. I just knew I had to paint it, it was so ‘us’. I con­tact­ed the la­dy who post­ed it and told her what I want­ed to do. She hap­pi­ly gave me her bless­ing.

Her Multicoloured Crown

How has your art evolved through the years?

All artists ex­per­i­ment and evolve over time, and for me, it's a very sub­tle shift from what you would have seen from my ear­li­er group shows. Of late, I’ve been lean­ing to­wards paint­ing groups of women (some sta­t­ic, oth­ers fun lov­ing), along with my usu­al por­traits. The colours are still bright and re­flect that Trinidad and To­ba­go vibe - that will nev­er change - and there are a cou­ple of pieces in the col­lec­tion with mut­ed colours as well. Plus, some of the new­er pieces are face­less be­cause I want their cloth­ing and pos­ture to tell their sto­ry, like my piece ‘Gos­sip Girls’. From their pos­es alone you can tell they're talk­ing some­body's busi­ness!

What in­spires you to cre­ate cer­tain im­ages?

A lot of things in­spire me and dri­ve me to pick up a pen­cil and start sketch­ing. It could be any­thing. Mu­sic. A pat­tern on piece of cloth. A new hair­do. Some­one hold­ing a mar­ket bag with veg­gies and fruit. Even the fe­male form by it­self is some­thing tru­ly gor­geous to me. I par­tic­u­lar­ly love draw­ing heads and shoul­ders; even when I doo­dle, it's the first part of the body I draw.

For my African in­spired queens (as I love to call them) I vis­it Niger­ian wed­ding pages on­line and I get in­spi­ra­tion from the com­bi­na­tions of colours in their dress­es, like cool blues against bright, or­ange hues and sun­ny yel­lows. Pin­ter­est is an­oth­er great source, but it's ad­dict­ing, you can get lost in there just look­ing at stuff, ha­ha­ha!

What at­tract­ed you to this style of paint­ing?

It wasn't so much of an at­trac­tion as op­posed to an in­cli­na­tion, be­cause the thing is, I was draw­ing and paint­ing this way with­out know­ing this method even had a name, and every­thing looked dif­fer­ent from the oth­er lo­cal artists whose works I loved. Since my youth I had a pro­cliv­i­ty for those bold black lines. Peo­ple would say, ‘oh, it's a car­toon’, but yet it wasn't, be­cause there were el­e­ments of re­al­ism in there. I would al­so look at works by artists like Roy Licht­en­stein and Kei­th Har­ing and feel an affin­i­ty with them, but it fi­nal­ly hit when a woman com­pared my pieces to Romero Brit­to who’s known for his neo pop paint­ings of the Roy­al fam­i­ly, the Oba­mas and oth­er celebri­ties, and I was like, well look at that… I was ac­tu­al­ly do­ing neo pop all along.

Tell us about which artists in­flu­enced your work and how you start­ed as an artist.

Well, be­sides Licht­en­stein, Har­ing and Brit­to, there are in­ter­na­tion­al painters like Tom Fe­dro, An­nie Lee, Syn­thia Saint James, Melis­sa Fal­con­er, Charles Bibbs and Lar­ry ‘Pon­cho’ Brown whose works I adore. Lo­cal­ly, the works of Danielle Boodoo-For­tune, Bri­an­na Mc­Carthy, Gabriel­la D’Abreau, Sarah Bur­rows, AJ Rogers and many more emerg­ing and es­tab­lished artists come to mind who I ap­pre­ci­ate and love. Al­so, when it comes to my art be­gin­nings, the jour­ney I am on now be­gan af­ter a huge years-long break. Up til that time, I was on a steady cre­ative path in the 80’s and ear­ly 90’s, pass­ing CXC art, at­tend­ing UWI’s Ex­tra­mur­al Pro­gramme in Com­mer­cial Art, at­tend­ing the John Don­ald­son Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute, etc. I start­ed work­ing and do­ing art on the side, but then I be­gan to go through a lot of tri­als and dis­ap­point­ments that had me ques­tion­ing if I should even be do­ing it at all, so I just ‘mash brakes’ and didn’t paint again un­til 2013. Look­ing back, I re­al­ize now that I need­ed that time to co­coon my­self and come back with re­newed, ded­i­cat­ed fo­cus and en­er­gy. I joined the Art So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and al­so the Women in Art Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, par­tic­i­pat­ing in group shows, pop ups and craft mar­kets and I am re­al­ly en­joy­ing be­ing a full-time neo pop artist.

Which paint­ing of yours are you most proud of, or con­sid­er a par­tic­u­lar favourite? What art achieve­ment are you most proud of?

Boy, the first part of this ques­tion is re­al­ly tough to an­swer, be­cause it's ex­treme­ly hard for me to choose a favourite. I re­fer to all my pieces as my chil­dren, even past com­mis­sions. Many have hap­py mem­o­ries at­tached to them and they still have a place in my heart. I just can't choose be­cause I paint them all with love.

In terms of art achieve­ments, hav­ing a suc­cess­ful de­but so­lo ex­hib­it (“I, Woman”) back in 2016 at the ASTT, was huge for me. See­ing that sup­port and love and just hav­ing peo­ple re­spect your cre­ative vi­sion and val­ue it, is in­deed a huge art achieve­ment by it­self. (So you can imag­ine the ex­cite­ment I’m feel­ing for Macafouchette), ha­ha­haa! All in all, I’m hap­py be­ing a Caribbean neo pop artist with a unique style and I look for­ward to see­ing where it can take me as I con­tin­ue my art jour­ney.