Soyi­ni Grey

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An­to­nio Figuero jour­ney to the Red House ac­tu­al­ly be­gan in 2018.

That’s when the young artist be­gan paint­ing the Red House, at the time it was still un­der restora­tion. It was be­cause of this pas­sion that he was in­vit­ed to last Fri­day’s re-open­ing of the Red House as the seat of Par­lia­ment to cre­ate a paint­ing of this once in a life­time event.

An in­vi­ta­tion he al­most de­clined be­cause the sig­nif­i­cance of the mo­ment al­most over­whelmed him. But he ac­cept­ed, cre­at­ing a tru­ly beau­ti­ful im­age of the new­ly re-opened par­lia­ment cham­ber, from his view in the me­dia box.

As an artist Figuero spe­cialis­es in cityscapes. So the Red House in­trigued him. The Richard Brid­gen’s de­signed struc­ture cuts an un­usu­al fig­ure in down­town Port- of- Spain.

It’s colour sets it apart in a sea of neu­tral colour build­ings. He has done sev­er­al paint­ings of the Red House from var­i­ous an­gles over the years. Even though it was still un­der restora­tion. He says we may nev­er wit­ness some­thing like this again, and as a artist he had to cap­ture it.​

One that he cre­at­ed view­ing the build­ing from Sackville Street, so that it is framed by the Plice Head­quar­ters, old and new, has been ac­quired and is now part of the Par­lia­ment art col­lec­tion.

It is that piece that se­cured his in­vi­ta­tion. “As a mat­ter of fact, when I was do­ing the one on Sackville Street, they were see­ing me in­side the Red House And it was af­ter that I got the call,” he says. ​

But he al­most re­fused the op­por­tu­ni­ty. As a land­scape artist, who spe­cialis­es in cityscapes, Figuero is ac­cus­tomed to paint­ing still life. The re-open­ing of Par­lia­ment, would have been full of peo­ple. The chal­lenge al­most over­whelmed him. But he de­cid­ed to ac­cept the op­por­tu­ni­ty. Even while there, seat­ed in the me­dia box, the old fear rose again. But then he re­mem­bered that a paint­ing is not a pho­to­graph, and he was able to put brush to pa­per. ​

“I don’t wor­ry about per­fec­tion. How­ev­er it comes out, it comes out,” he says. “You learn rules in art like per­spec­tive, light, shad­ows, et cetera. A lot of times I would break the rules of per­spec­tive be­cause I can. And I have the free­dom to do so,”​ he said.

Figuero is a self-taught artist. He laughs when asked about his pro­fes­sion­al train­ing, be­cause for him it be­gan and end­ed in sec­ondary school: South East Port of Spain. But he owes his art teacher there his sol­id foun­da­tion.

Den­nis Seaton taught him draw­ing, com­po­si­tion, and colour the­o­ry. “One thing he would say: learn to mix your colours. Learn to mix your colours! And to this day, that is true,” he says. ​

As for the paint­ing he cre­at­ed last week Fri­day it is the on­ly one of it’s kind. A true orig­i­nal. “I am cu­ri­ous to see where this will end up as well, be­cause there is some kind of com­pe­ti­tion for it now, ap­par­ent­ly,” Figuero says sheep­ish­ly.