Roslyn Car­ring­ton

"My work is like home to me. It comes from a very re­al and gen­uine space, cre­at­ed from re­al ques­tions. I am on­ly neg­a­tive when I don't live up to my own stan­dards." Many of the cre­ations of con­tem­po­rary artist and writer Jaime Lee Loy may shock, but her aim is to ex­plore rather than to sen­sa­tion­alise some of the dark­er out­posts of the hu­man psy­che. She doesn't mind cross­ing lines that oth­ers might be afraid to. "My art­work cen­tres around dif­fi­cult top­ics like so­cial con­cerns like do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. I spare noth­ing. It will at times be high­ly dis­turb­ing, but the top­ics are dis­turb­ing. You can find an aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing way to bring your view­ers in­to a world that is un­easy or dif­fi­cult, a way that brings your mes­sage across. It's prob­a­bly eas­i­er to di­gest than the front pages of the news­pa­pers. I don't think in terms of 'cross­ing lines'. I on­ly re­al­ly ever ask my­self, Is this the right medi­um? The right process and space for the work? The right method and ex­e­cu­tion?"

Like many artists, Lee Loy found in her cre­ativ­i­ty a way to ex­or­cise and make peace with her own dark mo­ments by trans­form­ing them in­to some­thing that could be ap­pre­ci­at­ed by oth­ers. "Neg­a­tive ex­pe­ri­ences that could have bro­ken me have been re­worked in my art and writ­ing for pos­i­tive out­comes. My art is a form of ther­a­py and en­light­en­ment and shar­ing of ex­pe­ri­ence." Many of Lee Loy's pho­tos, videos and writ­ten works have fe­male ex­pe­ri­ences as their cen­tral theme, but not through any de­lib­er­ate agen­da. "I would hope my work can be un­der­stood eas­i­ly by any­one-male or fe­male-as I aim to share hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence and thoughts. It's like ap­pre­ci­at­ing a movie or book about a place you've nev­er been to or an ex­pe­ri­ence that is dif­fer­ent from your own. Hope­ful­ly, the writ­ing al­lows you to en­ter that world." Yet, her art is far from be­ing an­ti-man. "Even if in some of my work I ex­plore fe­male angst, one does not cre­ate the oth­er." In spite of the trou­bling sub­jects she of­ten tack­les, she still be­lieves in love, mar­riage and fam­i­ly, which is why she en­joys the wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy ser­vice she pro­vides. "I'm that per­son whose eyes get moist when a cou­ple who re­al­ly love each oth­er share a touch­ing mo­ment."

She has ex­hib­it­ed lo­cal­ly, in Lon­don, USA, and Scot­land, and has trav­elled on fel­low­ships for work­shops, ex­hi­bi­tions and res­i­den­cies to places like Ver­mont, Con­necti­cut, Scot­land, and Lon­don.

Lee Loy is part own­er and founder of Trinidad Home Stu­dio. Her mis­sion is to pro­vide cre­ative ser­vices, such as writ­ing, video and pho­tog­ra­phy for projects af­fil­i­at­ed with the arts, ed­u­ca­tion, cul­ture, hu­man­i­tar­i­an work, not for prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tions, and fam­i­ly. "Two close friends of mine launched the band K2K last year and I was ex­cit­ed to pro­vide some work for their band. It was a new and re­fresh­ing take, with Fash­ion meet­ing Mas." One of Home Stu­dio's clients is The Fam­i­ly Plan­ning As­so­ci­a­tion, where she once worked. De­pend­ing on the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the project, the work she does there may re­main in­vis­i­ble to the pub­lic, as the or­gan­i­sa­tion some­times deals with abuse, with mi­nors and sex­u­al­i­ty. For her, such as­sign­ments are a means of chang­ing how peo­ple think.

"This way, peo­ple can achieve greater em­pa­thy and un­der­stand­ing of cer­tain sit­u­a­tions. I al­ways want them to leave ques­tion­ing and think­ing. It's not dec­o­ra­tive art, it's pur­pose-dri­ven. In a so­ci­ety like ours with so much di­vi­sion of class and re­li­gion and wealth, and in­creas­ing vi­o­lence against women and chil­dren, we need to start ad­dress­ing these sit­u­a­tions through art, writ­ing and phi­los­o­phy and de­vel­op re­al long-term plans for pro­gres­sive ac­tion. Not overnight ral­ly­ing or the ex­treme op­po­site (the to­tal de­nial of what's re­al­ly go­ing on)."

She's al­so a pub­lished au­thor, and her writ­ten words are as un­sen­ti­men­tal as her art. "My ar­ti­cles, for ex­am­ple like the ones I write for the on­line mag­a­zine, Out­lish, are on hard top­ics like re­li­gion, why peo­ple stay in com­pro­mis­ing re­la­tion­ships, so­cio-po­lit­i­cal top­ics - the 'make you think' type of writ­ing." She has pub­lished one piece in the an­thol­o­gy Trinidad Noir. In spite of the nar­row path she walks along the edge of dark­ness, her life and art are brim­ming with pos­i­tive ex­pe­ri­ences. "I've been lucky to have fam­i­ly and friends who've stuck with me, who know Jaime the reg­u­lar per­son who can kick back and have a good laugh or a good cry, the pro­fes­sion­al me, the artist me and the mom­my me. They have af­fect­ed me the most... in a good way."