Dominic Telfer, Lindon Mitchel hold joint exhibition

Dominic Telfer and Lindon Mitchel will hold a joint exhibition at Studio Joli featuring art inspired by scenes of daily life in Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean.

A media release said back in the 1970s in Oxford, Telfer had abandoned the idea of art as a vocation. He opted for a 40-year career in telecommunications but penchant for art was always simmering under the surface.

“After 40 years minding machines and databases, it has been a joy to return to Trinidad and paint the local everyday scenes…which are fast disappearing,” Telfer said in the release.

He has since become a familiar sight to those who frequent the Queen's Park Savannah, Port of Spain and environs. Many a day (or night), he can be found painting, striving to capture the moment with his paintbrush. Telfer’s medium of choice is gouache, a water-based paint which is more opaque than watercolour, and thus favoured by illustrators. As a plein-air artist, he enjoys its immediacy and versatility, the release said.

Realism and idealism describe Mitchel’s work, which takes an honest look at Caribbean people, the release said.

“I believe that art is transformative. Images cause us to stop and think about ourselves and our world. I seek positive transformation through the disruptive power of art,” Mitchel said in the release.

His early days were affected by proximity to artistic luminaries like Nobel laureate Derek Walcott and his uncle, internationally-renowned St Lucian sculptor Vincent Joseph Eudovic. He was also a student of Luigi St Omer, son of the late great Dunstan Gerbert Raphael St Omer, KCMGD, St Lucian painter, muralist and educator. Such illustrious influences heavily encouraged his artistic inclinations, the release said.

“My workflow involves first leaving the comfort of my home and going to the streets. There I observe people going about their lives. It is there that I find my inspiration to tell their stories: Stories of real people doing what they must to survive or enjoy life as they know it. These are the heroes in these paintings,” Mitchel said.

He has tried various media and styles, including pointillism and oil, but has developed a love for the challenge of watercolour. His artistic expression straddles the worlds of traditional painting, graphic design and photography. They inform the way he envisions and creates images to tell a story.

The exhibition opens February 1, from 5-8 pm and continues until February 13. Viewing is 10 am-6 pm, Monday-Friday and 10 am-2 pm on Saturdays at 21 Henry Pierre Street, St James.