Thesis Statement 2015

The healing power of art is the ideal I strive for as an artist. Art can operate on a physical and metaphysical basis, providing ideas or solutions to the viewer as well as the artist. Healing comes from knowledge and understanding the cause of the problem. I hope that my artwork gives both the viewer and myself the opportunity to raise our level of awareness, create a sense of community, and gain insight into the human condition.

My paintings are figural narratives that combine portraiture, history painting and religious or cultural art to examine issues stemming from my Caribbean heritage, such as postcolonial identity, liminality, cultural hybridity, migration and globalization. A native of the Caribbean island of Trinidad, I am interested in creating artwork that manifest my Caribbean aesthetic sensibilities, whether it be through color, form or compositional style. My sense of self is no longer truly unified or indivisible but is instead composed of parts and pieces common to other people and other cultures. My artwork tends to examine the connection between representation and identity with postmodern characteristics; “an awareness of collective identity, a cyclical view of time, fragmentation, religious or mythic references and a focus on polar opposites”: birth and death, the spiritual and the secular (Dunning).

My colors vary from monochromatic, usually signifying the past, to bright, almost pure color to signify the present. The extreme sunlight in the Caribbean makes living there a very colorful experience, such that color is imbedded linguistically to describe people, places or things. Contemporary artists Peter Doig and Chris Ofili, who have both migrated to Trinidad, have been greatly influential to my bright color palette and my varied paint handling techniques within a single painting. There are also multiple perspective points within one picture plane to give a sense of fragmentation and a narrative spreading across time and space. The hybrid narrative style of my paintings are influenced by contemporary artist Neo Rauch, whose paintings intersect his personal history with the politics of industrial alienation in Germany. Similarly, my paintings juxtaposes my personal history with the fragmented history of the Caribbean.

English poet John Donne in 1624 one wrote –

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…. (Meditation XVII)

The expression emphasizes a person’s connection to his or her surroundings and community. Although I agree with its meaning, in contemporary society, we are no longer limited by physical barriers, such as land and sea, in order to be connected to a community and in essence, I find it easier to think of an individual as an island existing within a global community. In my case, I like to think of myself, metaphorically, as my native island Trinidad, my family being the Caribbean and my community comprising of all the nations of the world. I am interested in understanding how living on an island affects the mental life of its people.

The metaphor of an individual being represented by an island is explored in my work and forms the basis of my painting Alamar, which translates to “to the sea”. The written phrase on the painting is “La Trinidad. I.” which refers to an early map notation for the island of Trinidad. It also plays upon the idea that I am Trinidad. In many ways by reexamining my birthplace and heritage, I am also in the process of discovering and understanding my true self. As a painter I also liken myself to the sea faring explorers and navigators venturing into the great unknown, whose histories were intertwined with Trinidad, such as Christopher Columbus and Sir Walter Raleigh. Ironically, my migration and education in United States America has made me closer, psychologically, to the colonist's or imperialistic perspective of life on the island, and it is as if I am now the colonizer.

Old and new geographical maps are a common motif in my paintings. Geography is fundamentally important to Caribbean culture and art and maps are of particular interest as definitions of the historical and cultural space of the region. They are commonly used as symbols of identity and feature prominently in the national iconography of Caribbean states (Poupeye). Historically and geographically, the nations of the Caribbean serve as crossroads or a bridge between the old world and the new; a liminal space both psychologically and socio-economically for its inhabitants living in a multicultural, postcolonial and globalized environment. As a pictorial device the use of maps also provide a sense of landscape beyond what is visible in our everyday lives, on a greater scale and emphasizes a place within the global community.

The Amerindian name for the island of Trinidad was “Iere” (Boomert), and although historians disagree on the meaning, it is interesting that the local slang uses the term “Irie” which has the same pronunciation, to describe the feeling of being stress free. This coincidence has lent itself to me equating a geographical location, such as an island, to an emotion or a certain way of thinking. Columbus also named the island “Trinidad” after the Holy Trinity- Father, Son, Holy Ghost (Hart 13). This knowledge as well as its spiritual connotations has been influential to my artwork and is reflected in the three part format of my painting as well as to my belief in the conceptual importance of names, whether it be of a person, place or thing.

My personal philosophy has developed from examining Christian beliefs and principles, Hinduism- the religion of my ancestors, and Greek myth and philosophy. Mythologist Joseph Campbell described “myth as what we call other peoples’ religion” and it has led me to compare the ideas presented not from a religious perspective, but from a philosophical and social standpoint. My conclusions are reflected in my work and are based around the main idea that there are three fundamental parts that make up the whole: religion, science and art form the core tenements of civilization; mind, body and soul for human nature; and creative, preservative and destructive forces perpetuate the ongoing cycle of birth, life and death. The intersection of spirituality and secular life is an ongoing exploration in my paintings as I believe all endeavors, whether through art, science, or religion, are interrelated and lead to the same end- to improve humanity.

In my paintings I tend to analyze the person or subject depicted in three parts; the physical appearance or body, the archetypal person, monument or activity as a representation of the mind, and a silhouetted figure to give a more innate sense of the person to the viewer. In my paintings, portraits of friends, relatives and individuals who have impacted my life, are juxtaposed to an archetypal figure, place, event or object from history, myth or religion, of whom they remind me. Their portraits may also include aspects of their personal history, their religious faith and or their cultural practices. The name of the person depicted in the portrait is also significant as it may give rise to the theme of the painting. My name Marvin, for example, meaning “friend of the sea” gave rise to the painting Alamar.

Influenced by the dreamscapes of naïve painter Henri Rousseau, the self-portraits of Frida Kahlo and the romantic landscapes of Casper Friedrich, my paintings may be described as “portrait landscapes” or “portrait dreamscapes.” The format is a combination of the psychological theories of both Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud.

Freud’s psychological format of ego, superego and id has greatly influenced the format of my paintings. The Ego corresponds to the apparent personality, the superego establishes the high standards of personal behavior and the id represents the deepest primitive source of life (Jacobus). Carl Jung, on the other hand, studied the world’s myths and the mythic systems, including alchemy and the occult literature. In them he saw many of the archetypal symbols that he felt were revealed in dreams- including symbolic quests, sudden transformations, dramatic or threatening landscapes, and images of God. His conclusions were that this literature, most or all of which was suppressed or rejected by modern religions, was a repository for the symbols of the collective unconscious- at least of western civilization and perhaps of other civilizations (Jacobus). In combining both theories within my painting I present to the viewer the complex nature of human psychology, and hopefully it produces an awareness that helps them to better understand themselves.

Mythologist Joseph Campbell has combined the theories of both Jung and Freud successfully in his work in the field of comparative mythology and comparative religion which has greatly influenced my own ways of thinking about the human narrative in my work. The birthplace of globalization, the Caribbean region had brought together the people of the four continents therefore my paintings incorporate many cross cultural elements and references, including mythology and religions of the world. The painting Alamar, for example, makes reference to the Hindu deity Vishnu who is popularly depicted in art as sleeping on the Cosmic ocean, dreaming of the universe.

In many ways I do view my life in terms of a mythical and spiritual journey, and have found solace in stories of the archetyptal heroes presented in myths and religion. Campbell describes the archetypal hero adventure as “beginning with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels there’s something lacking in the normal experiences available or permitted to the members of their society. This person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life giving elixir. It is usually a cycle, a going and a returning. The structure and the spiritual sense of the adventure can be seen already anticipated in the puberty or initiation rituals of early tribal societies, through which a child is compelled to give up its childhood and become an adult- to die to its infantile personality and psyche and come back as a responsible adult. To evolve out of this position of psychological immaturity to the courage of self-responsibility and assurance requires a death and resurrection” (Moyers). Therefore the basic motif of the universal hero’s journey- leaving one condition and finding the source of life to bring you forth into a richer or mature condition.

The overarching thematic narrative in my paintings follow this same structure- Antillean Passage is a body of work examining my own personal “rite of passage” journey juxtaposed against the development of the Caribbean region. The quest for identity and self- realization of the Caribbean region is very much my own personal journey, in becoming a responsible and independent adult.

Antillean or Caribbean can be used interchangeably to describe the same region. In many ways I prefer the word “Antilles” and its derivatives as it loses the imagery derived from the popular “Caribbean,” which has become too easily associated with imagery of exoticism as promoted by the tourism industry. The word Antilles originated in the period before the European conquest of the New World- “Antilia being one of those mysterious lands which figured on the medieval charts, sometimes as an archipelago, sometimes as continuous land of greater or lesser extent, its location fluctuating in mid-ocean between the Canary Islands and India” (boomert). In many ways the word “Antilles” forces me to reconsider, and look more intently at the region that I dismissed as all too familiar- and as it was before the conquests, the region become mysterious again.

Anthropologist Victor Turner defines “liminality” as the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of rituals, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the ritual is complete. During a ritual's liminal stage, participants "stand at the threshold" between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way, which the ritual establishes. More recently, usage of the term has broadened to describe political and cultural change as well as rituals. I relate postcolonial issues, the change in social, political and cultural norms, from colonial rule to independence, to the concept of liminality (Turner). It can also be applied to my experience for the last eleven years after migrating from Trinidad to the United States, as well as the state of the developing Caribbean region, from the so called “third world” to “first world” status.

During liminal periods of all kinds, social hierarchies may be reversed or temporarily dissolved, continuity of tradition may become uncertain, and future outcomes once taken for granted may be thrown into doubt (Turner). The dissolution of order during liminality creates a fluid, malleable situation that enables new institutions and customs to become established. Through my paintings I hope to examine and understand what came before and hopefully create new and improved customs, institutions, beliefs and values for my own life.

The painting Middle Passage, refers to the African Slave trade, that brought slaves from West Africa to the Caribbean and the Americas. During the journey across the ocean, many atrocious crimes were committed- the overcrowding of slaves on the ships caused many to die, and many slaves were thrown overboard and as Walcott puts it, “the sea sighs with the drowned from the Middle Passage”(Cullens). In terms of the ritualistic journey, the passage can be seen as a liminal period in the history of the now free Afro-Caribbean people as well as those of the Americas. The jellyfish signifies regeneration and hope. The implementation of the leatherback turtle, whose voyage across the Altlantic echoes that of the slave trade routes, symbolises resilience and persistence, and also signifies a “motherhood” or “soul bearing” motif, coming to shores of the Caribbean islands to lay their eggs and then return to the sea. In many Native American myths and legends, the turtle is honored for saving mankind from the Great Flood. The turtle symbol of the earth mother represents her stoic ability to carries the heavy burden of man on her shell (Moyers).

I am of Indo Trinidadian descent. After the abolition of slavery, Indian indentured laborers were brought to Trinidad and other parts of the Caribbean to work on the plantations. As a result of the oil discovery in 1910, there was influx of immigrants to Trinidad, which has evolved to having the most cosmopolitan population of the Caribbean countries- comprising of descendants from native Amerindians, Spanish colonists, British colonist, French colonist, African slaves, indentured laborers from Asia, merchants and businessmen from all parts of Europe and Arabia seeking fortunes in the new world as well as the Americas (Boomert). This gave rise to the culturally hybrid community, in which I grew up.

My ancestors and family became “creolized” to a certain extent, attaining Christian values and moving away from the traditions of our ancestral homeland of India. Creolization, as used in the Caribbean, describes the process in which the formation of new identities and inherited culture evolve to become different from those they possessed in the original cultures. It refers to the mixture of different people and different cultures that merge to become one (Cohen). However many families of Indian ancestry still managed to maintain their religious beliefs and traditions form India, which is still very prevalent to this present day. Thus a huge part of my artwork examines the idea of coming to terms with my Caribbean identity and understanding the factors and influences that have shaped my life, having grown up in a multicultural community. Through painting I am examining my life more closely by examining the lives of those who have influenced me in some way, be it friends, teachers or relatives.

My awareness of alternative modes of thinking and consciousness, as derived from my exposure to other cultures, has also shifted my sense of individual identity. The cultural historian and theorist Stuart Hall, wrote in 1987 of his Caribbean Background: “what I have thought of as dispersed and fragmented comes, paradoxically, to be the representative modern experience.” Postmodern theory supports Halls’ statement as it reflects the shift from an indivisible to a divisible self (Dunning).

My exploration of the concept of culture in my paintings encompasses the laws, rituals, values, beliefs, and intellectual and artistic endeavors of a society (Jacobus). The Caribbean region has essentially been the first globalized part of the globe, from the time Columbus entered the New World. Yet it has been underdeveloped and is still considered the third world. Only within the last century has Trinidad become independent from British colonial rule. In the aftermath of Independence, tribal politics arose, reflecting the racial, social, and cultural tensions of the time.

Postcolonial issues encompass these tensions, and I believe it is the role of the postcolonial artist, like myself, to address them in terms of art. Metaphorically, I have come to liken the state of a postcolonial developing nation to that of a young adult, like myself, leaving the supervision and security of their parents, to find their own way in life and in many ways create their own identity, culture and sense of financial stability. Many postcolonial issues that arise are usually a result of the past or ongoing relationship between the postcolonial nation and the colonists, much like that of the parent child relationship.

Dr. Eric Williams, historian and the first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago described the newly postcolonial state of the Caribbean in 1969: “Dependence on the outside world in the Caribbean … is not only economic. It is also cultural, institutional, intellectual and psychological. Political forms and social institutions, even in the politically independent countries, were imitated rather than created, borrowed rather than relevant, reflecting the forms existing in the particular metropolitan country from which they were derived. There is still no serious indigenous intellectual life. The ideological formulations for the most part still reflect the concepts and vocabulary of nineteenth century Europe and more sinister, of the now almost defunct Cold War. Authentic and relevant indigenous formulations are either ignored or equated with ‘subversion’. Legal systems, educational structures and administrative institutions reflect past practices which are now being hastily abandoned in the metropolitan countries where they originated. Even though both in the Commonwealth Caribbean countries and in the French Departments of literature of world standard and universal validity has been produced by writers such as Lamming, Naipaul, Braithwaite, Walcott, Aime Cesaire and Frantz Fanon… and even though in Trinidad and Tobago the steel band and calypso have emerged, nevertheless artistic, community and individual values are not for the most part authentic but, to borrow the language of the economist, possess a high import content, the vehicles of import being the educational system, the mass media, the films, and the tourists. V.S. Naipaul’s description of West Indians as ‘mimic men’ is harsh but true. Finally, psychological dependence strongly reinforces the other forms of dependence. For, in the last analysis, dependence is a state of mind. A too long history of colonialism seems to have crippled Caribbean self-confidence and Caribbean self-reliance, and a vicious circle has been set up: psychological dependence leads to an ever growing economic and cultural dependence on the outside world. Fragmentation is intensified in the process. And the greater degree of dependence and fragmentation further reduces local self-confidence….

Given its past history, the future of the Caribbean can only be meaningfully discussed in terms of the possibilities for the emergence of an identity for the region and its peoples. The whole history of the Caribbean so far can be viewed as a conspiracy to block the emergence of a Caribbean identity- in politics, in institutions, in economics, in culture and in values. Viewed in historical perspective, the future way forward for the peoples of the Caribbean must be one which would impel them to start making their own history, to be the subjects rather than the objects of history, to stop being playthings of other people” (Williams ).

The Martiniquan writer Frantz Fanon, in the Wretched of the Earth (1961), spoke about the need to resurrect the pre-colonial past in order to address post-colonial existential questions such as identity (86). While this usually means the ‘pre-diasporal’ origins of the Caribbean people, such as Africa or India, it also applies to the Prehispanic past. The Amerindians, despite being victims of the first holocaust of the new world, has gained considerable political and cultural significance as a symbolic ancestral culture that imparts an indigenous historical legitimacy to the current inhabitants of the region, regardless of their origin (Poupeye 180).

This concept forms the basis of my painting Caribs’ Leap. The painting refers to the mass suicide that occurred in Grenada in 1651. The last of the indigenous Carib Indians were rounded up on a cliff by the French soldiers, but instead of choosing to be imprisoned, tortured or killed by the French they all jumped off the cliff into the sea below. Their act, much like the sacrificial acts of heroes in myth, made them heroic, transcending themselves, giving birth to a region named after them – the Caribbean. Sacrifice and bliss, death and rebirth are the themes examined in this painting. The birth of the Caribbean region unfortunately coincided with mass eradication of its indigenous people. Ironically, in the process, the Caribbean became the birthplace of globalization, and of the New World.

Caribbean poet Derek Walcott, in a discussion about the problems facing an artist of the Caribbean, a region with little in the way of truly indigenous forms, and with little national or nationalist identity, states: “We are all strangers here... Our bodies think in one language and move in another". Walcott identifies as a Caribbean writer, a pioneer, helping to make sense of the legacy of deep colonial damage. In such poems as "The Castaway" (1965) and in the play Pantomime (1978), he uses the metaphors of shipwreck and Crusoe to describe the culture and what is required of artists after colonialism and slavery: both the freedom and the challenge to begin again, salvage the best of other cultures and make something new. These images recur in later work as well. He writes, "If we continue to sulk and say, Look at what the slave-owner did, and so forth, we will never mature. While we sit moping or writing morose poems and novels that glorify a non-existent past, then time passes us by”(Cullens).

Fanon also sums up the role of the postcolonial artist by stating that most urgent thing for the intellectual is to build up his nation, interpreting the manifest will of the people and discovering and encouraging universalizing values (199). In order to accomplish such a task the postcolonial artist should engage the community and create an ongoing dialogue among its members.

Philosopher Richard Rorty’s perspective on the pragmatist’s idea of self and the human community supports Fanon’s ideas and has reinforced my own ideas about community engagement. Rorty characterizes the Idea of the self as “centerless and an everchanging web of beliefs and desires that produces action. He encourages us to tailor a coherent personal identity for ourselves that can serve as the foundation for our own behavior and claims that the way we think and act is thoroughly embedded in the understanding and concepts unique to the society in which we live. This concept builds our sense of community as we realize that our inheritance from and our conversation with our fellow human beings is our only source of guidance. Rorty believes that the awareness of this fact can help us to move from confrontation to conversation in our ongoing inquiries (Grenz). Pride in oneself starts with being proud of where one comes from and as an artist I hope to make sense of the cultural, social, historical and environment dynamics of the Caribbean region, particularly Trinidad, in relation to myself as an individual and find a coherent personal identity.

Unlike the overall negativity of the other post-structuralist philosophers, Rorty remains “utopian in his viewpoints and continues to advocate the kind of thoroughgoing cultural pluralism that is in keeping with the spirit of tolerance that has made constitutional democracies possible. After the “high altars” are gone, he suggest wholesome aspects of culture will multiply – galleries, book displays, movies, concerts, museums” (Grenz). Similarly, my artwork is hopeful and should ultimately serve to lower or remove the walls of misunderstanding which separate us humans from one another, and create a sense of community and understanding.

As Walcott once described in his Nobel Laureate lecture “Antillean art is a restoration of our shattered histories, of our shards of vocabulary, our cultural environment embracing the past and the present” (Cullens 15). Healing the wounds of the colonial past, making sense of our fragmented histories and assisting in the development of self-reliance and dependability among the Caribbean populace and myself is definitely my goal as an artist. Frank Stella summarizes my goal as a painter in his statement, “The idea in being a painter is to declare an identity, not just my identity, an identity for me, but an identity big enough for everyone to share in”(Leider).

Contemporary philosopher Alain de Botton proposes that art is a therapeutic medium that can help guide, exhort and console its viewers, enabling them to become better versions of themselves (8). He claims that art serves to make memorable the fruits of experience, keep pleasant and cheerful things in sight, remind us of the legitimate place for sorrow in a good life, uphold a sense of good qualities needed to rebalance our lives, help us identify what is central to ourselves, recover our sensitivity, and provide us with the voice of other cultures, such that it stretches our notion of ourselves and our world (Botton 8).

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