An­na Wal­cott-Hardy

Don­ald "Jack­ie" Hink­son is a mas­ter wa­ter­colourist who has had a life­long pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with cap­tur­ing the unique land­scape, ar­chi­tec­ture and lifestyle of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Caribbean. It was British painter Lu­cien Freud (1922-2011) who in­sist­ed that a paint­ing must be able "to as­ton­ish, dis­turb, se­duce, con­vince." Hink­son has been able to achieve this with the clar­i­ty and weight of his wash­es, the ac­cu­rate jux­ta­po­si­tion of tones, the abil­i­ty to skil­ful­ly ed­it the com­po­si­tion, and cap­ture the light.

Over the past five decades, Hink­son, a pro­lif­ic painter, who has pro­duced more than 2,000 wa­ter­colours, has been un­re­lent­ing in his dri­ve not just to doc­u­ment, but to in­ter­pret the land­scape in a tech­ni­cal­ly adroit style. Hink­son's tal­ent was ap­par­ent from an ear­ly age, but a turn­ing point came in 1970 when he re­turned home af­ter grad­u­at­ing with a bach­e­lor of fine arts de­gree and diplo­ma in ed­u­ca­tion from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Al­ber­ta, Ed­mon­ton, Cana­da.

"I was stunned, af­ter a five-year ab­sence, by the light and at­mos­phere of Trinidad and I took up the medi­um se­ri­ous­ly, plein air. I al­so paint­ed the tra­di­tion­al and plan­ta­tion ar­chi­tec­ture...for more than 20 years I strug­gled with the medi­um, frus­trat­ed and de­pressed that I was not mak­ing the progress I want­ed. I had even stopped paint­ing in oils. I re­fused to give up. It was on­ly af­ter some 30 years that I felt I could con­sis­tent­ly pro­duce a good wa­ter­colour."

A brief cu­bist in­flu­ence was ap­par­ent in the Sev­en­ties when Hink­son's palette was dark­er, the colours less rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the hu­mid trop­ics and more re­flec­tive of a tem­per­ate cli­mate, the wash­es more opaque and less var­ied, as seen in Ma­yaro House, 1976. Hink­son's tech­ni­cal evo­lu­tion is not eas­i­ly cat­e­gorised in­to decades; the changes are more sub­tle. How­ev­er, in the eight­ies there is an un­mis­tak­able shift to­wards a more de­tailed style, par­tic­u­lar­ly in paint­ing the fo­liage, com­bined with the use of more di­verse, weight­i­er wash­es, as in Ca­paro Val­ley, 1987.

A few years lat­er, there is a de­cid­ed move away from plein-air sub­jects "bathed in light" to more mo­rose sil­hou­ettes, shad­owed land­scapes with heavy, ash-grey cu­mu­lus clouds. Hink­son's style has con­tin­ued to ad­vance; in the last few years he has sought a more ab­stract, min­i­mal­ist style where he us­es as few shapes as pos­si­ble, paired with a lu­mi­nous flu­id­i­ty, rem­i­nis­cent of the Ba­hamas se­ries by Winslow Homer (1836-1910).

As a wa­ter­colourist, he avoids short­cuts or any tricks of the trade. You'll nev­er find Chi­nese white in any of his pieces; in­stead he us­es the nat­ur­al white of the pa­per. A dis­ci­plined draughts­man, he fo­cus­es on tech­ni­cal pro­fi­cien­cy and econ­o­my of style, ac­quired through years of ap­pren­tice­ship.

He has ex­plained that when he is paint­ing en plein air, al­though the im­ages are recog­nis­able, fore­most in his mind are "the ab­stract for­mal re­la­tion­ships in the work, the weight of the wash­es... the tone and shape jux­ta­po­si­tions, the light, the swift­ness of ex­e­cu­tion."

Al­though it is not a pri­or­i­ty in the paint­ing process, one can­not help but make ref­er­ence to cer­tain ger­mane state­ments, themes or tropes, which seem to echo through­out the work: light vs dark, sa­cred vs the pro­fane, so­cio-eco­nom­ic rur­al-to-ur­ban dis­par­i­ties, colo­nial plan­ta­tion ar­chi­tec­ture vs post-mod­ern ur­ban sprawl, are ap­par­ent in his wa­ter­colours as well as the larg­er works such as the Christ in Trinidad oil-on-board se­ries and the Queen's Hall Car­ni­val mur­al. Hink­son con­tends that he gives lit­tle thought to the mean­ing of the im­ages, to the sym­bol­ism, but there are facets of his bi­og­ra­phy that may have in­formed these di­chotomies.

Born in Cor­beaux Town, Port-of-Spain, in 1942, in­to a close-knit fam­i­ly of four boys and two girls, he was in­tro­duced to the com­plex­i­ties of Trinidad so­ci­ety at an ear­ly age. His par­ents came from dif­fer­ent back­grounds. His fa­ther A Lennox Hink­son, was a trav­el­ling of­fi­cer with the Colo­nial Gov­ern­ment who grew up, for the most part, in the rur­al Bras­so/Ca­paro area, while his moth­er Jeanette (nee Bain) came from a large fam­i­ly of ur­ban pro­fes­sion­als liv­ing in the cap­i­tal, Port-of-Spain. The fam­i­ly home was a large, ag­ing, gabled, colo­nial house on Rich­mond Street.

The house was a pop­u­lar lim­ing spot for his friends from the Rich­mond Street Boys' Pri­ma­ry School. At a time when Trinida­di­an mid­dle and up­per-in­come so­ci­ety had strict, un­writ­ten rules on di­vi­sions ac­cord­ing to class, colour and re­li­gious af­fil­i­a­tion, the Hink­son house­hold could be de­scribed as quite a lib­er­al, wel­com­ing space. Hink­son and his broth­ers would of­ten vis­it their neigh­bour­hood friends who lived in the mod­est homes and bar­rack yards of Cor­beaux Town. He was drawn to the colours, sounds, smells and ca­ma­raderie.

As a young boy he al­so was in­ter­est­ed in the sprawl­ing, murky coast­line and docks of Sea Lots, as well as the many fish­ing vil­lages across the is­land. He be­gan to record these im­ages on pa­per in his ear­ly teens. He would of­ten re­turn to these mem­o­ries of com­mu­nal ur­ban life and re­mote seascapes in his lat­er work.

In 1954, Hink­son ex­celled aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly and won a schol­ar­ship to at­tend the pres­ti­gious Queen's Roy­al Col­lege (QRC) in Port-of-Spain. The school is one of the "Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en" his­tor­i­cal build­ings along the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah. There he would form a life­long friend­ship with a fel­low stu­dent, Pe­ter Min­shall. In 1961, Hink­son would join Min­shall, Pat Bish­op, Al­ice Green­hall and Arthur Webb in a land­mark ex­hi­bi­tion, Five Young Artists, pro­duced by the Art So­ci­ety.

The pres­i­dent of the Art So­ci­ety, Sybil At­teck (1911-1975), was im­pressed and im­me­di­ate­ly honed in on the tal­ent of the young artists. In At­teck's re­view of the ex­hi­bi­tion in the Na­tion news­pa­per (Au­gust 11, 1961) she wrote that the ex­hib­it "shows for the first time an artist of rare tal­ent, Jack­ie Hink­son." No­bel lau­re­ate Derek Wal­cott, then art crit­ic for the Trinidad Guardian, wrote of the "rich promise of all five," and praised Hink­son's study of Rich­mond Street as well as of his "Sis­ley-styled En­trance to the Wharf " as "sub­dued but shim­mer­ing work." Many years lat­er, a friend­ship would de­vel­op be­tween the two artists and Wal­cott would re­main an ad­mir­er of Hink­son's work.

As a teenag­er, Hink­son's in­ter­est in land­scape wa­ter­colour paint­ing con­tin­ued to grow and he be­gan vis­it­ing the pub­lic li­brary to learn more about art. He re­mem­bers en­joy­ing books on Eng­lish 19th-cen­tu­ry land­scape wa­ter­colourists and on the art of Cezanne. Around this time he was al­so im­pressed by the art of lo­cal stal­warts Sybil At­teck, MP Al­ladin, Leo Bas­so and Carlisle Chang.

But noth­ing left more of an im­pres­sion on the young artist than the ex­pe­ri­ences he had while trav­el­ling thor­ough the coun­try­side with his fa­ther and broth­ers. "Yes, well, apart from the fact that those were ex­treme­ly hap­py times-be­cause here we are, four boys in the fa­ther's old 1932 Mod­el-A Ford car with the rum­ble seat in the back that opened out and we were ex­posed to the rain and the sun and so on, trav­el­ling through the land­scape, whether it's cen­tral, or deep south, or the east coast of Man­zanil­la, Ma­yaro or Guayagua­yare. I think that liv­ing in town and then be­ing ex­posed to the stun­ning open-air land­scape, the wide, wide, panoram­ic vis­tas of, let's say a Ma­yaro beach at low tide, or the un­du­lat­ing hills of Ca­paro Val­ley, along with the ar­chi­tec­ture, left an im­pres­sion."

As an adult, there would be a the­mat­ic fo­cus on plan­ta­tion life in his paint­ings, cap­tur­ing the dai­ly rou­tine of work­ers liv­ing in the mul­ti-eth­nic, rur­al vil­lages of Trinidad and To­ba­go; mo­tifs that are al­so mir­rored in the works of Carlisle Chang and Isa­iah James Bood­hoo. He sought to de­pict the unas­sum­ing, in­dus­tri­ous labour­ers on the co­conut plan­ta­tions, the cane cut­ters of the sug­ar es­tates (Look­ing North From Ca­roni, 1999), the fish­er­men pulling-in the dai­ly catch (Pulling Seine, Ma­yaro, 2011), the planter re­turn­ing home (The Planter's Re­turn, 2002) to his fam­i­ly. Al­though the fig­ures are of­ten po­si­tioned asym­met­ri­cal­ly, on the bor­der of the paint­ings, they act like a gel, con­nect­ing all of the el­e­ments (To­co Vil­lage, 2001). His fig­ures re­flect the mood of the paint­ing, even if their backs are to the view­er- whether they are tired, re­laxed, fo­cused on a par­tic­u­lar job or com­plete­ly con­tent, the dis­po­si­tion of each fig­ure is re­layed per­fect­ly by the artist in a dis­tinct­ly nar­ra­tive style. The re­sult is a se­ries of mul­ti-lay­ered pieces, drawn with­out sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty or nos­tal­gia, but with an in­her­ent in­ter­est in doc­u­ment­ing im­pact­ful lives.

"There was some­thing about the way that rur­al peo­ple and the coastal peo­ple in­volved in an ac­tiv­i­ty, like the co­pra in­dus­try, farm­ing or fish­ing, that im­press­es you, some­thing about their close­ness to na­ture, some­thing about their hum­ble­ness that moves you."

For the past 40 years in T&T, there has been a move­ment away from the plan­ta­tion econ­o­my to the oil and gas in­dus­try. Mod­ern hous­ing de­vel­op­ments are be­ing built on acres of fer­tile agri­cul­tur­al land, his­tor­i­cal es­tate colo­nial hous­es are bull­dozed to make way for mul­ti-storey sky­scrap­ers of glass and steel. Hink­son has been able to cap­ture this so­cio-eco­nom­ic shift in his 21st-cen­tu­ry wa­ter­colours. Yet he has al­so con­cen­trat­ed on the re­silience and in­nate cre­ativ­i­ty of the peo­ple through the scores of wa­ter­colours that have fo­cused on crick­eters, steel­pan men and women as well as Car­ni­val mas­quer­aders.

Plein-air paint­ing in the trop­ics al­so re­quires a great deal of in­no­va­tion, as well as sta­mi­na, speed and pa­tience. A dis­ci­plined draughts­man, Hink­son has been able to mas­ter a de­mand­ing medi­um in a tem­pera­men­tal en­vi­ron­ment.

There are many chal­lenges as the light changes rapid­ly, shad­ows are fleet­ing, tor­ren­tial down­pours are fre­quent and at times the winds can be strong enough to knock over the easel. An­oth­er chal­lenge is the in­sect fac­tor: ants, mos­qui­toes, even snakes. The weath­er al­so changes quick­ly and the heat makes the paint dry al­most im­me­di­ate­ly. In fact, Hink­son prefers to work in hot con­di­tions when con­trasts are strong, even blind­ing. Then there is the hu­man fac­tor, the by­standers who ob­serve, com­ment and cri­tique, which seems to have lit­tle ef­fect on the painter -in fact he once ex­plained that he finds their com­ments "in­trigu­ing."

On morn­ings, he leaves his St Ann's home armed with a light alu­mini­um easel and a strong port­fo­lio with pa­per, board, paints, brush­es, wa­ter, palette, sun­screen and of course a hat. He choos­es his sub­ject in­tu­itive­ly, based on a strik­ing shape, tonal re­la­tion­ship, con­trast or "per­haps an emo­tion­al at­tach­ment or an un­con­scious sym­bol­ic recog­ni­tion."

He sketch­es the sub­ject quick­ly and loose­ly, in just a cou­ple of min­utes with pen­cil or with the paint­brush, sug­gest­ing rather than de­tail­ing the com­po­si­tion. Work­ing rapid­ly, Hink­son ap­plies wash­es eco­nom­i­cal­ly. He prefers to stand while he paints, which en­ables broad­er arm work so that he can achieve those vig­or­ous, ex­pan­sive brush strokes. He of­ten moves around the pic­ture's sur­face area, try­ing to main­tain con­trol over the emerg­ing com­po­si­tion with each new wash, ap­ply­ing the dark­er tones and fi­nal­ly the dark­est.

At a time when so many artists seek sym­bol­ism over tech­ni­cal dex­ter­i­ty and in a place where lo­cal art has be­come more de­riv­a­tive than in­no­v­a­tive, Hink­son has stead­fast­ly re­fused to move with the crowd. His pieces draw you in and rep­re­sent an in­sight­ful take on Caribbean cul­ture that is as re­al and in­trin­sic as the steel­pan mu­sic he so en­joys. For me, his wa­ter­colours are cin­e­mat­ic to the core, com­pa­ra­ble to the di­rec­tors of mod­ern cin­e­ma. Hink­son is able to frame his sub­ject with the skill of Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, ed­it and de­con­struct the im­age with the pre­ci­sion of Akiro Kuro­sawa, cap­ture the light and sub­tle hues with the del­i­cate vi­bran­cy of Bernar­do Bertoluc­ci and con­vey the emo­tion and con­ti­nu­ity of the mo­ment with the grit­ty, yet epic lat­i­tude of Mar­tin Scors­ese.

More im­por­tant­ly, over the years he has de­vel­oped the skill of un­der­stand­ing when the paint­ing is fin­ished, how not to over­work the pa­per, know­ing when to stop.

This piece first ap­peared in the cat­a­logue of Hink­son's ret­ro­spec­tive ex­hi­bi­tion at the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um. Reprint­ed by per­mis­sion of the writer.