Reflections on Trinidad

His realistic style, his ability to capture a mood, his use of vivid colours as well as his softer, nostalgic, local scenes are just some of the reasons Horizons Art Gallery invited artist Hayden Geeawan to host an exhibition.

Horizons manager Lisa Leid said the gallery, located on Mucurapo Road, St James, appreciated Geeawan’s wide spectrum of local imagery. The current show, she said, featured a variety of subject matters including landscapes, wildlife, and scenes reminiscent of Trinidad of yesteryear.

“We felt that with the calibre of his work, we were surprised he wasn’t more well-known. He had some setbacks which, I think, made him focus on the more commercial side of his work instead of developing his own body of work. I don’t think he’s had the opportunity to really focus on exhibiting as much as he would like to so when we saw the calibre of his work we felt we would like to give him that opportunity.”

The self-titled exhibition, which opens on October 16 and continues until October 27, contains about 20 paintings of acrylic on canvas. Geeawan told Sunday Newsday since he started working on the exhibition late last year, he painted “whatever came to him,” creating new pieces and completing older ones.

He said although this was his fifth exhibition, he waited for 15 years for Horizons to ask him to be featured. Asked why he did not approach the gallery, he said he had never done so as he did not want to “push his work” on anyone.

“I see myself as simple, not better than anyone else. I don’t really have the confidence to approach anyone. I told myself if I am a good enough artist they would approach me, if they see something in my work it would be different, not like they pity me or something.”

Geeawan, who will turn 50 on October 29, said he never thought of doing anything else with his life.

He said over the years he had been mainly interested in representational and impressionistic landscapes with many elements from his imagination. Although skilled with portraiture, his main interests were birds and local scenes, whether historical, nostalgic or landscapes – always with acrylic on canvas.

However, recently he was more interested in fantasy, including Caribbean folklore and science fiction. He would research a topic, picture them in his mind’s eye and bring them to life on canvas. He said he also paid more attention to details now, could produce more pieces in a particular time frame, and was more adventurous with his colours and angles.

Geeawan said his love of art started with drawing and colouring books when he was a toddler. In primary school the teachers would ask him to do drawings to use for teaching or to hang on the walls of the classes. Then, at Chaguanas Junior Secondary School he did art from Forms I to III, and in Form III he won the award for the highest mark in Art among his classmates.

At that point, he left school and stopped painting for a while, discouraged when someone borrowed his paintings and never returned them.

However, at 17, he was inspired by the 1979 movie The Black Stallion and started painting again. Using house and acrylic paint, he recreated a poster of the movie on a nine-foot tall piece of bristol board. “When I was doing it a lot of people asked what I was doing and told me it wouldn’t come out good at all, but when I was finished and they saw it, it silenced them.”

From then on he continued painting and drawing for his personal enjoyment and, at 19, he began illustrating text books for two local publishing companies, which he did for 20 years. Unfortunately, he lost all his personal pieces in 1994 when his home burnt down.

Then, in 2002, one of the publishers who hosted art classes asked him to help the students with an art project. He said someone saw the piece and contacted a newspaper about it. He was interviewed, the story published in the paper and that was the start of his painting career.

Three years later, he won a contract to create the artwork for Carnival-inspired stamps for the TT Postal Corporation. Since then he has had relatively constant work with commissions (particularly portraits), post cards, book illustrations, corporate projects, and the rare exhibition.

Geeawan said he never did any formal art training. He said tried and art class at the University of the West Indies but it did not work out for him. “They wanted me to do research and I wanted to paint so after three days I dropped out. But I am glad I never learned about art from anybody. I didn’t want to copy anybody or be like anyone else. Because of that, what I do is my own style.”

Through it all he has received moral and financial support from his parents, Basdeo and Lenor Geeawan. “They always supported me right through. They believed I had a gift and that one day I would make it. They never pushed me to do anything else. I was free to follow my dreams.”

However, he stressed that being a professional artist was not an easy road to take because of a lack of support for art in general and the resulting financial burden. “I never lost my joy for art. I wouldn’t lie and tell people things are going really good. It’s not smooth sailing. It’s a struggle. If I didn’t have a passion for art I would have left it out and looked for a next way to make a living, but this is what I love to do. I am just waiting for my art studio to finish being built to focus better and do more.”

Geeawan said he would like to do another exhibition soon with folklore and more local back-in-time themes. In fact, he had already completed some including one with slaves working in a cane field, complete with bison and wagons and slave masters on horses; and a train carrying sugar cane through Galconda.