Lee An­na Ma­haraj

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

Near­ly 200 works by 21 artists filled the Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege Art Lega­cy ex­hi­bi­tion this week.

Host­ed at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) Ho­tel, the ex­hi­bi­tion brought to­geth­er paint­ings, pho­tog­ra­phy and mixed-me­dia works span­ning gen­er­a­tions of Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege (QRC) alum­ni, cel­e­brat­ing the school’s en­dur­ing artis­tic lega­cy.

The artists came from dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions and back­grounds, from re­tired doc­tors to pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers. How­ev­er, each cred­it­ed QRC with nur­tur­ing a life­long pas­sion for cre­ativ­i­ty.

“We have work here from 21 artists, five of the 21 are dead, but we still have some of their work that’s on dis­play that we bor­rowed or rent­ed. All of the oth­er work here are liv­ing con­tem­po­rary artists,” said Bri­an Har­ry, chair­man of the Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege Art Lega­cy com­mit­tee.

“It’s very dif­fi­cult for us to de­vel­op na­tion sta­tus with­out a se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of art and cul­ture. If I am to be bi­ased, ob­vi­ous­ly, I would say that it’s be­cause we have al­ways pro­duced thinkers. We’ve al­ways pro­duced peo­ple who are pre­pared to push the lim­its, push the en­ve­lope, if you want to call it that. And so, art falls right in­to that. Art tells a sto­ry, right? It’s a sto­ry about hu­man­ness,” he added.

Har­ry al­so ex­hib­it­ed sev­er­al pho­tographs, a pas­sion he traces back to his QRC days.

“I start­ed dab­bling in pho­tog­ra­phy around age 11, when I was a stu­dent at QRC. I re­mem­ber the pho­tog­ra­phy club, but in and out of it over the years, and then re­cent­ly took it up re­al­ly se­ri­ous­ly about 20 years ago and start­ed push­ing it. My work is around land­scapes, seascapes, and what I call the hu­man scape, which is the hu­man con­di­tion,” Har­ry ex­plained.

His pho­tographs ex­plored both nat­ur­al land­scapes and the hu­man con­di­tion, in­clud­ing scenes from Sea Lots, Beetham Gar­dens and La Basse, which he says en­cour­age view­ers to re­flect on in­equal­i­ty and en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues.

While Har­ry’s work re­flects his own artis­tic jour­ney, many of the ex­hi­bi­tion’s artists share an­oth­er com­mon thread, cred­it­ing for­mer teacher Don­ald “Jack­ie” Hink­son with help­ing to shape their pas­sion for art. Hink­son was al­so a fea­tured artist at the ex­hi­bi­tion.

“I have been pro­duc­ing art for over 65 years now, so the range of medi­ums I use is big. I have draw­ings in some sketch­pads. I have draw­ings in con­té cray­on of old build­ings and tra­di­tion­al ar­chi­tec­ture. I have wa­ter­colours of our land­scape on ur­ban and rur­al and seascape, and I have oils, and I even have one mur­al-size work cap­tur­ing the de­struc­tion af­ter the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup, and then I have wood carv­ings, life-size wood sculp­ture carv­ings,” he ex­plained.

When asked how he feels see­ing so many of his for­mer stu­dents with their mas­ter­pieces on dis­play, Hink­son said:

“It’s very sat­is­fy­ing, of course, and I see it with­in the whole pic­ture of the QRC tra­di­tion and so on. I’m not in a po­si­tion to say how much pos­i­tive in­flu­ence I had on them, you know, but hope­ful­ly I was an in­flu­ence and that that in­flu­ence is re­flect­ed in what they’re pro­duc­ing now.”

One such for­mer stu­dent is David Lee­hue, who spe­cialis­es in hy­per-re­al­ism with air­brush and hand paint­ing. Be­yond his artis­tic work, his sto­ry is one of re­silience.

“In 2001, I was in­volved in a car ac­ci­dent, where I lost my right eye, and I have steel in my hand. And un­for­tu­nate­ly, I now have glau­co­ma in my good eye. So, all the work you see here was done af­ter the ac­ci­dent. But it doesn’t stop me,” he re­count­ed.

Lee­hue com­bines air­brush tech­niques with tra­di­tion­al hand paint­ing to cre­ate re­al­is­tic work.

“So, I mix both of them. What you’d find are back­grounds look­ing hand-paint­ed, but the main im­ages tend to look like a pic­ture or some­thing that some­body stuck on. I like the fact that peo­ple could ask me, is that a pic­ture, or is that a paint­ing? That makes me feel good,” Lee­hue said.

The ex­hi­bi­tion’s cu­ra­tor, Patrick Roberts, shares a sim­i­lar jour­ney of per­se­ver­ance. Liv­ing with glau­co­ma and par­tial blind­ness, Roberts has con­tin­ued to paint, ex­press­ing grat­i­tude for the sight he still has. He al­so cred­its Hink­son, who was one of his first A-lev­el teach­ers at QRC, for help­ing shape his love for art.

Hink­son’s in­flu­ence al­so ex­tend­ed to re­tired anaes­thetist Dr Ger­ald Hinds, who shared that his art jour­ney on­ly se­ri­ous­ly be­gan about six years ago.

“I was ex­posed to art in my first three years af­ter third form, ex­posed to Mr Hink­son in the third year, but that was it. At one point in my post-grad stud­ies in Eng­land, my chil­dren, my wife and my kids left, and I used art to com­mu­ni­cate with them. I would write let­ters, in­clude draw­ings, and that was a means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. I did a bit of origa­mi as well. So, that was my artis­tic bent, as it were,” Dr Hinds re­flect­ed.

But, at 69 and in post-re­tire­ment, Hinds was look­ing for a hob­by.

“I had time on my hands. Empti­ness Syn­drome: the chil­dren are all adults, and they’ve left the home, just my wife and my­self. So, I asked my sis­ter to find a teacher for me. I know I have a lot of art to learn, oth­er me­dia, seascapes, so there’s a lot more to do. But I guess my mes­sage is you can do it too. You don’t need to be a for­mal artist or trained in art and that kind of thing,” he said.

The ex­hi­bi­tion, which ran from 22-30 Ju­ly, served as a fundrais­er to re­fur­bish the QRC art room.