Tremaine So­ca Warn­er

Lo­cal re­al­ist painter An­tho­ny Boos has un­veiled a col­lec­tion of his lat­est paint­ings at an ex­hi­bi­tion he hopes will at­tract dis­cern­ing art lovers and col­lec­tors.

Boos, who lives in Trinci­ty, dis­cov­ered his nat­ur­al artis­tic abil­i­ty at a young age and was al­ways in­trigued by the leg­endary works of Re­nais­sance artists like Leonar­do da Vin­ci and Michelan­ge­lo. By age ten, he had al­ready set his artis­tic fo­cus on iconog­ra­phy–the sym­bol­ic and large­ly con­ven­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of par­tic­u­lar sub­ject. At the time, Boos had a fix­a­tion with im­ages of Je­sus Christ, par­tic­u­lar­ly his cru­ci­fix­ion. As a young man, he al­so helped his fa­ther Syd­ney Boos with the con­struc­tion and pre­sen­ta­tion of Car­ni­val floats in the 1950s.

Boos, 65, was born with a con­di­tion called Syn­dacty­ly which is a con­gen­i­tal mal­for­ma­tion that caus­es fin­gers and toes to have a webbed or fused ap­pear­ance. In Boos' case, the con­di­tion caused his fin­gers to be con­joined and short­ened. In a tele­phone in­ter­view on Fri­day, the out­spo­ken artist said even af­ter cor­rec­tive surgery, the con­di­tion con­tin­ued to have a no­table ef­fect on his ca­reer paths and per­son­al choic­es.

"Peo­ple's eyes are at­tract­ed to my hands," he said. "They see my hands and be­come com­plete­ly trans­fixed."

The at­ten­tion his hands re­ceived caused Boos to spend his younger years as a "shy fel­la" who had grown ac­cus­tomed to be­ing stig­ma­tised and by­passed.

In spite of this con­di­tion and the in­se­cu­ri­ties which ac­com­pa­nied it, Boos man­aged to find suc­cess in mul­ti­ple artis­tic ca­reers in­clud­ing paint­ing, sculpt­ing, de­sign, ad­ver­tis­ing and even fa­cial restora­tion.

He holds a de­gree in com­mer­cial art and de­sign from an af­fil­i­ate of Bris­tol Uni­ver­si­ty in Eng­land and has re­ceived train­ing at the Madame Tus­sauds Lon­don wax mu­se­um. Apart from this, he has ap­plied his artis­tic skill to the field of ad­ver­tis­ing in com­pa­nies such as Ale­ong & Agos­ti­ni Ad­ver­tis­ing as well as Lons­dale Saachi & Saachi. He lat­er took a step back from com­mer­cial art and in 1974 grad­u­at­ed with a de­gree in Mor­tu­ary Sci­ence and Em­balm­ing from an af­fil­i­ate of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cincin­nati.

Asked more about this un­usu­al choice of study, Boos said he saw fa­cial restora­tion and cos­me­tol­ogy as art. "Through fa­cial restora­tion, my artistry was able to come out. To take an ema­ci­at­ed per­son and put them back the way they were, that is art. It shows re­spect for the body and it re­al­ly does a lot for the be­reaved."

From 1974 to 1978, he man­aged Clark & Bat­too's Fu­ner­al Di­rec­tors and Em­balmers in San Fer­nan­do and was in­volved in the em­balm­ing of de­ceased promi­nent lo­cals such as Jean Miles and George Bai­ley. In more re­cent years he has been in­volved in mas de­sign with well-known mas­men such as Pe­ter Min­shall, Wayne Berke­ley, Ed­mund Hart, Bri­an Mac Far­lane and Raoul Garib.

He has since re­turned to art full-time, fo­cus­ing main­ly on por­traits of peo­ple and pets, book il­lus­tra­tions, cul­tur­al pieces as well as paint­ings of build­ings.

He has re­tired and now does com­mis­sioned art pieces.

"I tend to avoid com­mon­ly done land­scapes and works of an ab­stract or im­pres­sion­is­tic na­ture," he said. "My style is for­ev­er seek­ing to be as re­al­is­ti­cal­ly de­tailed as pos­si­ble." One of Boos' pieces ti­tled Go­ing Home is dis­played on the north­ern side of the Queen's Park Oval near Ser­pen­tine Road. It de­picts the Scar­let Ibis fly­ing in the Ca­roni Swamp.

The ex­hi­bi­tion, which opened last Fri­day, fea­tures 42 acrylic pieces that he paint­ed be­tween 2010 and now.

One of the stand-out paint­ings in the col­lec­tion is one ti­tled Dead Canopy. He said the paint­ing had a "fright­en­ing look" and was in­spired by the im­age of dark tree tun­nels.

Boos' ex­hib­it con­tin­ues un­til April 29 at the Trinidad Union Club on Floor 22 of the Nicholas Tow­ers in Port-of-Spain. While he wants to sell as many paint­ings as pos­si­ble, he al­so hopes the ex­hib­it will build his rep­u­ta­tion as a lo­cal artist.

�2 For more in­for­ma­tion:

640-8644 or e-mail

an­tho­ny­boos@hot­mail.com