AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

While King Charles III us­es a scep­tre and crown to show­case his pow­er, Trinidad-born artist Sarah Knights con­tin­ues to ce­ment her lega­cy with the stroke of a brush.

And she will soon get a chance to show­case her tal­ent to a glob­al au­di­ence via a de­pic­tion of the re­cent­ly coro­nat­ed King.

Born in San­gre Grande, Knights dis­cov­ered at a young age her love for draw­ing and art.

This ex­plains ex­act­ly why she jumped at the op­por­tu­ni­ty when asked to com­mis­sion a stag­ger­ing por­trait of King Charles for the Ju­ly cov­er of Tatler, a British fash­ion and lifestyle mag­a­zine.

Knights said she had no ties to the pub­li­ca­tion and was ran­dom­ly dis­cov­ered through her so­cial me­dia posts of her work.

Al­though her paint­ings have at­tract­ed the eyes of peo­ple across the world, Knights said she is not fazed by the at­ten­tion, as her eyes are on­ly set on her art pieces.

“I am fo­cus­ing just on my work, I have no time to fo­cus on the in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion to be hon­est,” Knights told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

“To be quite hon­est, once you’re do­ing art you don’t re­al­ly have time for that you know.”

For the past eight years, Knights has shared her pas­sion for art with her stu­dents, em­ployed as a vi­su­al arts teacher at Holy Faith Con­vent, Cou­va.

Knights con­sid­ers her­self to be a ‘pri­vate’ per­son and has not yet the shared news with her stu­dents, but hopes they will be en­cour­aged to pur­sue their pas­sions.

“This is how I view the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem when it comes to art. Of course, every­one says they care about art right, but I feel like art still gets pushed to the side­lines. I’m grate­ful we have a prin­ci­pal who sees the im­por­tance of it, I’m hop­ing the stu­dents them­selves will see the im­por­tance of art and un­der­stand that art can get them var­i­ous places,” she said.

While there are many who are in­fat­u­at­ed with the pomp and cir­cum­stance sur­round­ing the British roy­al fam­i­ly, there are oth­ers who deem them­selves an­ti-monar­chists.

But Knights said she does not fall in­to ei­ther cat­e­go­ry, as she sim­ply does not fol­low any of the roy­al hap­pen­ings. For Knights, her main mo­ti­va­tion for ac­cept­ing the com­mis­sion was her love for art and she is en­cour­ag­ing oth­er lo­cal artists to let their pas­sion dri­ve them to great op­por­tu­ni­ties in life.

“With art be­ing such a sub­jec­tive thing you will face some type of cri­tique. But you have to re­mem­ber to be true to your­self,” Knights said.