In her new art, Tracey Johnson is – seeing her way

IN Ways of Seeing, a book-length essay by the critic John Berger which became a classic, the reader is told, “When we ‘see’ a landscape, we situate ourselves in it. If we ‘saw’ the art of the past, we could situate ourselves in history.”

One quick look at any of Michel Jean Cazabon’s images will help readers better understand the second half of that quote. For instance, his Corbeaux Town, Port of Spain, a monochromatic painting of the area once known by that name, features a very real-looking representation of what the town would have been like: small vessels pulling onto a shallow shore; wooden, waterfront structures portrayed with architectural precision.

Cazabon’s art was rooted in realism. What he gave audiences was a look into 19th-century Trinidad, an island which had previously not been considered in the fine-art world.

Tracey Johnson’s paintings in her latest show, The Mind is a Lunatic, at Medulla Art Gallery, are a far cry from the historical, plain (as in “unadorned” or “presented as is”) spirit of Cazabon’s art.

But Johnson has immense talent for realism. As patrons descend the circular staircase into Medulla, one of the first pieces they’ll see is Reading the Air. The painting consists of a street scene from what appears to be the inside of a vehicle. The foreground shows incredibly realistic raindrops skating down the windshield of this vehicle. The background is the street, cars parked at the side of the road, and a brown building.

From a distance, it’s easy to mistake the painting for a photograph. Johnson says she paints from reference photos. This particular image, she says, comes from the streets of St James.

In terms of representing the “real,” this is perhaps her most straightforward offering in this exhibition. Johnson doesn’t rest on her refined, realist painting skills. Instead, she takes these common TT scenes and transforms them through inserting or erasing details and surreal colouration.

Black Cat is a good example of Johnson’s use of both of these tools. On the left side of this street scene, the pavement, walls, windows and wires all bear some resemblance to their real, concrete counterparts. The pavement is somewhere between a dirty ochre and brown. The walls are pale, sun-bleached yellow. A singular white lamppost shoots up in the middle of this pavement. The road upon which the titular black cat struts is painted all white. The empty space above the cat is painted black, interrupted by white wiring. The gutters bleed a dark, sanguine red. On the right stands a white building with black gates.

It’s ominous. A black cat, considered a symbol of bad luck in popular culture as a result of its heritage in European or American stories of witches; a black sky; bloody sewers; and whited-out roads aren’t the common reality of any city or borough in TT. Well, one can find cats on most days and bloody sewers on the particularly bad ones.

Rather than presenting the viewers with the truths a photograph would present – that is, a sort of factual historical record – Johnson opts to present viewers with an emotive reality.

It’s not unsafe to say that most of the nation lives in fear of crime. As a result, the streets are often perceived as dangerous and unsafe. Violent crime aside, road fatalities such as the recent death of 19-year-old Lysanne Julien make even the otherwise innocuous parts of TT a source of suspicion and fear.

Asked if these fears were a motivating factor behind the creation of this painting, Johnson said she prefers not to share what she had in mind when painting any of her work – a right to silence which artists are given.

In Chaos of Thought, a similar anxiety can be found. The painting features some swimmers with tubes and noodles a few metres away from a jetty. In the bottom right corner of the painting is what appears to be a dorsal fin. Shark-infested waters, perhaps?

The Void brings audiences to a jetty at Maracas Bay. For the most part, the painting depicts the real scene that beachgoers would recognise. The only aberration here is a singular, imperfect black circle which covers the end of the jetty.

The exhibition isn’t made up only these sorts of ominous, fearful paintings. Sacred Ritual features two men in white shirts with bowties and the shoulder of another in a black shirt or blazer. None of these men have heads. The white-shirted man on the left is fixing the collar and bowtie of the white-shirted man on the right. The title implies tenderness – that the fixing of a tie or collar between two men can be imagined as an act of care.

What viewers take from Johnson’s surreal paintings comes down to their own interpretation. She doesn’t use her realist skill to foist some pre-set meaning onto her paintings. These are artefacts of perspective, not of fact.

The exhibition’s titular painting, The Mind is a Lunatic, features a beachside scene. In the top half, the image appears normal. A lush hillside scene is filled with verdant trees. The white sand sprawls until it meets the shoreline.

However, the pirogues resting on the shore are upside down. Johnson says there is no top or bottom to the painting. One may choose to hang it so that the hill and its trees are upside down, rather than the pirogue.

Ultimately, what Johnson is offering the viewing public is a chance to look into the scenes, characters, and colours in which her mind sees the world.

Johnson has been working in this style for some time – infusing real scenes with surreal elements, while still presenting mostly photo-realistic paintings.

On August 24, Newsday published a piece about Maya Cross-Lovelace and Maya Ramesar, two painters who are choosing to represent the landscape in their own language rather than the photorealistic. It seems more of TT’s artists are moving away from the literal and into the emotional and metaphysical.

Artist bio:

Tracey Johnson is a Trinidadian painter whose work merges realism, surrealism and abstractionism. She primarily works in oil on canvas. The result is work that is both rooted and untethered – grounded in the textures of Trinidadian life, yet touched by something universal and otherworldly.

Johnson is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design, and worked in advertising before dedicating years to raising her three children.

The Mind is a Lunatic is at Medulla Art Gallery, 37 Fitt Street, Woodbrook, Port of Spain. It opened on September 4 and continues until September 25. The gallery’s opening hours are 10 am-6 pm Monday - Friday and 11 am- 2 pm on Saturdays.

On September 18, from 7-9 pm, the gallery will host an artist talk: Johnson will be in conversation with poet Shivanee Ramlochan.