Twin artists share psychic link

Since childhood, twin artists Prabu and Parmanan Singh have crafted paintings in a shared labour of love underlined by what they believe to be a near-psychic connection.

The duo spoke to Newsday at the recent gala ceremony at Queens Hall, St Ann’s, for recipients who had been unable to attend the main national awards ceremony on Republic Day. The Singh brothers, 58, were awarded the Hummingbird (Silver) Medal for art and culture. It was the first time twins were awarded a national honour in TT at the same time.

The brothers said they are from humble family beginnings and have endured artistic criticism, as they taught themselves to produce works that have been exhibited both locally and abroad. These paintings largely detailed the lives of East Indian sugar workers in Trinidad. They hope their work also encourages young people to explore their own creativity in visual art.

Their drive came from within. “We can’t explain it. We’d have 20 drawing books, with us just drawing, drawing and we’d go in school and everybody wants to see what we’ve done,” Prabu said.

They began with copious sketches. At first they couldn’t afford paint and resorted to using the likes of house paint to create their art. “Our parents always encouraged us, never discouraged us,” Prabu said. While humble cane-cutters, the parents would buy little items to help their sons’ art, including Chinese laquer. Today they are known for working jointly on one canvass.

Overseas their efforts included creating a 40-foot mural of the Hindu epic, the Mahabharat in Fort Lauderdale, plus participating in Carifesta.

The twins said making money had never been the focus of their art, but simply creating artwork. They taught themselves art history.

“We know all about Leonardo da Vinci, Picasso and Rembrandt,” Prabu said, quoting Picasso, “Art washes away from the soul, the dust of everyday life,” to say that when an artist creates a piece of art the process washes clean his soul.

They said that to succeed at art, one must truly love it.

They have been painting for 35 years, including paintings on display outside the Queen’s Park Oval and the Red House. The book Through the Eyes of the Caribbean Artist features their work. Prabu said, “You could say we eat and sleep art. We have the passion.”

They laughed at the mixups sometimes caused by their being twins. “When customers see me at the PoS branch, they say, ‘Didn’t I just see you down in Chaguanas?’” Parmanan said.

On the reputed twin-connection, they denied ever having any shared feeling of physical pain, but said they did share an artistic psychic connection, and often had the same mental visualisations of concepts for a piece of artwork even though physically separated. Prabu said, “For example, I do a piece of art and he says he had seen in his mind exactly the same thing. Sometimes we ‘see’ the same thing, a vision, but not always. ‘I seeing that and you seeing the same thing.’ ‘I envision the same thing, what are you doing here?’ There is some kind of connection. We can’t explain it.”