Intuitives

Primitives or intuitives, that is how this special group of artistes are described. This is the groupwho have received no formal training but are able to attract great admirers to their works. Their work can be said to be truly Jamaican because it is not influenced by outsiders, but rather is the raw pure honest interpretations of these artistes. One of the first such individuals to become known in Jamaica is John Dunkley. A barber by trade, he is said to have decorated his shop with exotic and impressive animals painted against strange landscapes. His story is somewhat extraordinary as it is said that his paintings were reproductions of nightmares that haunted him until his death. Another intuitive who came from Jamaican soil is Mallica “Kapo” Reynolds. A ‘Shepherd’ in the revivalist movement, Kapo painted as well as sculpted. His works were Afrocentric in nature focusing on Jamaica’s African heritage.

Out of Many one People

Prior to independence and shortly thereafter the works of artistes in Jamaica were focused on the struggles of the Jamaican people as well as their inheritance of African practices. There co-existed at that time, as it still is today, formally trained artistes as well as the intuitives. In recent times mergers of the two styles of art - that of the formally trained and that of the intuitives have been the practise. Modern Jamaican art has evolved into a carefully balanced beautiful realism with the European influence and the abstract art which is the Jamaican blend. No matter what the styles may be however there is no denying the impact that social issues have on art, from the works of Edna Manley, to that of the most recent graduate from the Edna Manley College for the Visual and Performing Arts, to those of the street artistes who scrawl graffiti on walls, they all speak to that which is their reality. Jamaican art has a positive outlook for the future as more of the educated class forms the middle class or upper middle class of society then the desire for art becomes much more and so artistes will always have a market in their home land. The fact that the world has now become an easily accessed global village gives Jamaican artistes the opportunity to spread their reach far beyond our shores. International art exhibitions, which many Jamaicans are already participating in, are also open to them.

Jamaican art has a tone, a flare, a flavour of its own. It is well recognized and respected the world over. It says clearly and vividly in pictures, paintings and sculptures what our motto says in words, “Out of Many One People.” So if you were to paint Jamaica’s history in art you would have to draw careful strokes with a fine brush, meticulously trace fine lines on your canvas, then take bold colours and brighten the picture and finally smooth it over with care.

Article Sources:

Five Centuries of Art in Jamaica Published by the National Gallery 1976

Development and Decolonisation R. Greenwood & S. Hamber

Jamaican Art 922-1982 Published by Smithsonian Institution and the National gallery of Jamaica 1983

Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendez Belasario and his World Tim Barringer, Gillian Forrester and Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz Yale Center for British Art in association with Yale University Press

Interview with Mr. Winston Donald Fine Arts Dealer, Fine Arts Critic/ Newspaper Columnist (done December 2, 2009)