Jackie Hinkson to give artist talk on Saturday

Award-winning artist/painter Donald “Jackie” Hinkson will host an artist talk at the Central Bank Museum on October 14 from 5-7 pm.

This talk comes as his exhibition Taking Shape: A journey in Sculpture nears its end on October 17.

Hinkson is largely known for his work in plein-air watercolours and drawings, but has also worked in oils, acrylics and wood sculpture.

The exhibition opened on September 11 in the temporary exhibitions gallery of the Central Bank Museum, an earlier press release from the bank said.

It added that the works in the exhibition had been decades in the making; “from ideas and sketches formed out of the artist’s love for geometrical forms and the challenge of planes and angles, to three-dimensional shapes being born more than 50 years later.”

The exhibition comprises ten new sculptures and those were sketched in the 1960s. There are also seven wooden sculptures from work done over the years, and 12 drawings.

Hinkson demonstrates his artistic versatility and the far-reaching range of his practice at 81, the press release said.

“As Hinkson continues to challenge himself and the way we define art from the region, it is our hope that this exhibition inspires all who see it and that it is a particularly poignant demonstration to young artists that one’s artistic journey can be filled with many triumphs and surprises at all junctures, if one stays true to the ideas one wants to share with the world,” it said.

Hinkson was introduced to sculpture as a student at the University of Alberta, Canada in the 60s, the release said.

Up to that time he had not considered the medium seriously because few artists in Trinidad and Tobago practised it.

“Painting ruled. I was surprised at how quickly and how eagerly I embraced this, to me, new medium,” Hinkson said. “At the time, a dominant international movement in the art world was towards abstraction and minimalism. This was also the focus of the sculpture department at the university.

“We, the students, conceived our ideas on paper, then built them with the help of lab technicians and machinery. We did not shape or carve our forms with our hands.

“For at least two years, I explored dozens of ideas on paper, building two or three.

"None of these were figurative. While all these ideas and finished pieces looked non-objective, I am convinced that the hundreds of figure drawings I was producing at the time influenced them at some level – their proportions and their gestures.”