Gaby Beston Edwards newest solo on exhibit at Soft Box

Change can be scary but, if you have the courage to do it, it can be amazing.

Artist Gaby Beston Edwards made that discovery this year and one result, a shift in painting style, has led to her newest solo art exhibition, Joy is Not Meant to be a Crumb.

Edwards explained the title is a line from a Mary Oliver poem. Oliver was an American poet who found inspiration in nature and Edwards has loved Oliver’s work since she was introduced to it over 25 years ago.

The titles of all the paintings in the show are lines from one of Oliver’s poems.

“Nature has always been my window, where I come back to myself. And with her work I can imagine myself where she is and have that experience because they are so poignant and so true to what I experience in nature as well. That is why I linked the show to her.”

Most of the pieces were named after they were completed. They were titled depending on how she felt about it and which line of poetry gave her the same feeling.

“A lot of the lines I pulled are about being enthralled with life and the very simple aspects of living – noticing, attentiveness, that aspect of paying attention to what’s around you.”

Another inextricably link for Edwards is one of joy and hope. But she said the show is as much about grief as it is about those positive feelings.

Joy is Not Meant to be a Crumb has 21 pieces in chalk pastels and acrylic. And some are very large as she wanted to immerse herself in the paintings.

As with her older work, the subject matter is still botanical but her approach is different. She changed the canvas, using it raw instead of treated. She also used acrylics and chalk pastels rather than oil paints and the work is more abstract than detailed and realistic.

“The style requires patience in a very different way. It’s layers and layers of translucent washes whereas before, with the oils, it was very intense, saturated, thick pigment.”

She said when she starts a piece, she has no idea what it will become. But artist Che Lovelace told her to embrace chaos, to let go of her control and that has been the major shift in her work – embracing the intuitive aspect of the process.

She kept the aspects of her old process she enjoys most, like drawing on the canvas in preparation for painting and isolating a particular area of interest. But she left behind the steps that felt tedious.

The results are less about the plant and more about the experience of colour and light. They thrill her and she is excited to continue painting in the new style.

Edwards told WMN the last exhibition she had was in 2018. While she had produced work since then, the process felt hollow, so she knew it was time to make a change.

“It was a gestation period of gathering information, new inspiration, observing other artists, looking at what’s been happening in the art world and where things are going, and where I’m most drawn to.”

She said she has always been drawn to abstract work but the work she produced was very detailed.

It all began to change when her mother died from cancer in 2020.

Her mother had been a support and a big part of her painting process, so her death was a huge upheaval in her life and it threw her off course.

The usual ups and downs of life felt very heavy and she had to find different ways to process her grief. She was not able to produce any work even though her family was very supportive and her husband and twin daughters tried to encourage her.

She only started to work again in January of this year when she found a new voice.

Edwards said she had some important conversations with other artists like Lovelace and Ken Crichlow, which helped her get to where she is now. Then, in January, one of her close friends went into her art room and started changing up the space.

It worked and her work started flowing. She felt joy and hope.

“I look back over the last 20 years of exhibiting and think of it as research for what I’m doing now.

“It’s been a very interesting process for me, of seeing how what I was so passionate about was losing traction for me, and where I needed to listen, course correct and head to somewhere new.”

She said it is scary because her audience knows her for one style of work. It was difficult to step away from it but she knew it was something she had to do. And she hopes a large body of work will come out of that research over the next 20 years.

Edwards’ Venezuelan mother and English father met in Trinidad and Tobago, where he lived, and got married. Her mother returned to Venezuela for her birth but she has always lived in TT.

And art has always been a part of her family.

With uncles who are artists, her mother dabbling in various art media and her grandmother owning an advertising agency, it was natural for her to go into art.

Noone ever told her she could not pursue it and she was always supported.

She attended Holy Name Convent where she won a UN art calendar competition. Then, at age 16, she went to England to study art but found the country too cold and dark to live. She was homesick and returned early.

She later went to Eckerd College in St Petersburg, Florida, where she majored in art. But after visiting New Orleans a few times, she transferred to Loyola University in the city to study art and psychology.

“New Orleans had much more of a Caribbean feel than anywhere else in the US I’d ever been. It’s much more diverse, it has the French architecture – it really was much more my vibe.”

After graduating in 2004 she returned to Trinidad. She said the owners of Horizons Art Gallery immediately took her “under their wings” and she had her first exhibition the next year.

Since then, has had six solo exhibitions and participated in several group shows. Her work has been displayed in the most prominent galleries and several public art forums in Trinidad.

Edwards recalled, in her last semester of university, she did pilates training and, when she returned to Trinidad, taught it for four years. She then taught yoga for 15 years, even opening a popular yoga business with a partner.

She said after her mother passed; yoga no longer worked for her. She left the business, stopped teaching yoga and, in 2021, started practicing another form of movement called Artemis Movement, which was founded by her mentor, teacher and friend Barbadian Christy Punnett.

Said the philosophy and language of Artemis played a big part in helping her get where she is today. And she eventually began teaching it.

“Teaching a movement practice has been hand-in-hand with my art practice since the beginning.

“The Artemis Movement philosophy is one of wholeness, embracing all aspect of the spectrum of the human experience – grief, joy, hope and everything in between. The practice develops a life skill, not just a movement skill.”

She said she has always been attracted to beautiful language and Punnett took the story of the goddess Artemis and extrapolated what mattered, such as her regenerative skill, wild nature, self-determination and self-guided direction.

“The practice asks you to really understand what you value and to try to build a life from that.

“I guess the depts of that questioning comes from the depts of the art that I’ve been producing. There is almost a necessity for an element of dept for art to have impact. And that dept comes from self-inquiry and not running away from life.”

Joy is Not Meant to be a Crumb will be on display at Soft Box Gallery, St Clair, until December 14. For more information, visit her website at www.artemismovement.co or on Instagram at gabybestonedwards.