Showcase to take art lovers on a journey

Of Barbados . . . is the name of the art exhibition currently being held at Caribbean Brushstrokes, Pelican Village.

It is where veteran artists Professor Emeritus Sir Henry Fraser and Arthur Atkinson are showcasing their beautiful works, incorporating various aspects of Barbadian heritage and taking art lovers on a journey worth the ride.

The exhibition runs until October 9.

Few lives bridge art, medicine, history and public service as seamlessly as that of Sir Henry Fraser.

A physician, educator, author, architectural historian, broadcaster and artist, Sir Henry’s contribution to Barbados has been both wide-ranging and deeply rooted in place. As a landscape expressionist, his work reflects a lifelong fascination with the island’s architecture, coastlines, historic spaces and natural beauty.

Alongside an extraordinary academic and medical career, he has exhibited as an artist for decades, including a oneman show at London’s Langton Gallery in 1976, followed by exhibitions at Talma Mill, Pelican Gallery, Queen’s Park Gallery and Gallery of Caribbean Art.

His parallel careers have continually met at one point: Barbados — its heritage, its stories, its landscape and its identity.

What exactly makes Sir Henry paint?

He shared with Buzz: “I had two aunts who were artists. Aunt Marion showed me how to draw and painted a coconut tree at the age of 4 or so. I never looked back! The Lodge School thought art was for sissies and had no Karl Broodhagen or Briggs Clarke, so I simply drew things and people, and caricatured the masters. I just had to draw. I was discouraged from being an artist or an architect, but buildings always attracted me, especially our beautiful Gothic churches.

“As a medical student at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus in Jamaica, I discovered magnificent art, and I coordinated a students’ arts workshop on campus, where we were privileged to have the great Barry Watson, principal of Jamaica’s Art School, give us free tuition on Sunday mornings for two terms. He greatly influenced my efforts, although I never had the luxury of the beautiful nude female models he loved to paint!

“In London I discovered wonderful expressionist artists and the British war artist John Piper and the German Emil Nolde were favourites. I hitchhiked across Europe with water colours, painting plein air – and I think I have painted in a dozen different countries – from Jamaica and Canada to Scotland and Greece!”

Sir Henry has always tried to graduate from simple representational to more meaningful and dramatic expressionist painting, attempting to elicit a real sense of the tremendous energy in the surf at Bathsheba, St Joseph, and the cool or the heat in a landscape.

“Plein air or outdoor painting in five or ten minutes is thrilling, and sketches can be worked up into bigger works in the studio. I have stuck with water colours because they can be dramatic and full of feeling. And, most important, quick … which is what works best for an overworked, full-time physician scientist with little time to spare.

“I painted regularly for diversion while doing my PhD in London, and was able to have a show in a professional gallery among the galleries of King’s Road in 1976. It was well reviewed in the London papers and I was thrilled when Sir Hugh Springer bought two paintings.”

Sir Henry’s themes are the nature that inspires him – seascapes and landscapes especially.

“Bathsheba is my muse, followed by the Crane, St Philip, and our garden. But buildings hold a special place for me. Sketching and line drawing come easily, and my Historic Houses pen and wash work came about when I discovered on a lecture tour of Canada in 1980 that historic buildings were of prime value in Canada, while we were destroying ours as fast as we could. So as a labour of love, to rescue our treasure trove – worth gold for heritage tourism – I produced a book of paintings about them. There is a total of 55 works over several years and three editions of Historic Houses. This current exhibition includes a few of our most popular and important historic houses.

“So I paint for myself and my wife and to share, and I’ll keep painting as long as I can hold a brush,” Sir Henry quipped. (CH)