Mar­sha Pearce

Win­ston Ian Stew­art, bet­ter known as vi­su­al artist Sun­di­a­ta, has been en­gag­ing with light in his art for decades. Ex­cept for some mono­chro­mat­ic ren­der­ings in ink or char­coal, which he may ex­e­cute at night, he choos­es to paint on­ly dur­ing the day­time so that nat­ur­al light be­comes a cru­cial in­put in his work. It is the per­sis­tence of this light el­e­ment in his art that he ac­knowl­edges in his new ex­hi­bi­tion, Lu­mi­nous."My stu­dio is de­signed to cap­ture the move­ment of the sun. The 10 am light will come in and the mid­day light. These af­fect my can­vas­es. This ex­hi­bi­tion is a cel­e­bra­tion of that fact. I am not cel­e­brat­ing in a ro­man­tic way, though. Light in­forms and chal­lenges what I am do­ing so I am cel­e­brat­ing in a re­al sense, through the work," Sun­di­a­ta said.

The artist was born in Bar­ba­dos but has lived in T&T since the 1970s. He has ex­hib­it­ed his work in the Caribbean, North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope and has re­ceived awards for ex­cel­lence in paint­ing, draw­ing and sculp­ture.Like his past ex­hi­bi­tions, the new show draws the eye to colour. In­tense blues and greens give life to paint­ings like Tas­sa & Hosay. Opaque ap­pli­ca­tions of colour are jux­ta­posed with more trans­par­ent treat­ments. Raw, vi­brant pig­ments min­gle with more mut­ed ones. Flat, smooth colours are ar­tic­u­lat­ed along­side rough­ly ap­plied ones. In this pre­sen­ta­tion of colour, light dances, bounces, scat­ters, gets soaked up and is re­flect­ed.Sun­di­a­ta said his at­ten­tion to light in his two-di­men­sion­al works is not about chiaroscuro–the use of strong con­trasts be­tween high­lights and dark shad­ows to il­lus­trate form. For him, that is a lim­it­ing way of think­ing about light. In­stead, he is pre­oc­cu­pied with the re­la­tion­ship be­tween light and var­i­ous hues."With­out light in all its man­i­fes­ta­tions, colour would be a nonen­ti­ty. There is al­so the light that comes from colours–a light that in­forms and in­ter­feres with oth­er colours. If you have a white can­vas sur­face and you put to two colours and leave a part of the can­vas un­paint­ed, you will get a re­flec­tion of those colours on that white part of the can­vas. Then there is the de­gree of re­flec­tion, so there is all of that hap­pen­ing in the work," he said.

"Your sur­face–can­vas, pa­per and so on–is very im­por­tant. It has a lan­guage of its own. Your job is not to kill the thing. It is to use it," he added.Along with draw­ings and paint­ings, his body of work in­cludes wood sculp­ture in samaan, cedar, ma­hogany and sapodil­la. Sun­di­a­ta in­cludes in this show a piece that pays trib­ute to the late sculp­tor Luise Kimme, who lived and cre­at­ed her art in To­ba­go for many years be­fore her death in April. Light is al­so a key play­er in the three-di­men­sion­al works on dis­play."Var­i­ous types of wood re­flect light dif­fer­ent­ly. The colour and den­si­ty of the wood grain af­fect light," he ex­plained.Sun­di­a­ta al­so us­es light to con­vey mood. In pieces like On the Way, an at­mos­phere of som­bre iso­la­tion is es­tab­lished. In oth­er pieces, a live­li­ness is ev­i­dent. His still lifes, for ex­am­ple, are far from still. He presents leaves and fruits in a spir­it­ed, dy­nam­ic way with light shim­mer­ing be­tween and through pow­er­ful and of­ten ag­gres­sive strokes.

With his cel­e­bra­tion of light in his work, Sun­di­a­ta ad­mit­ted that he is still learn­ing while mov­ing to a more con­fi­dent po­si­tion. Part of that learn­ing is de­vi­at­ing from some of the rules of im­age mak­ing and us­ing artis­tic li­cence in a cal­cu­lat­ed way. "In the mak­ing of art, I think I have a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of what the light is do­ing– much more than I knew years ago–and I can use that knowl­edge to pro­duce art now that is more re­solved, in a more artis­tic sense rather than a log­i­cal sense."

Lu­mi­nous runs un­til Oc­to­ber 17 at 101 Art Gallery, Hold­er's Stu­dio, 84 Wood­ford Street, New­town.