WHEN you visit the exhibition Such Things Exist, don’t expect to find the typical paintings of Indian or bele dancers, landscapes, portraits or the vibrant colours some people expect in Caribbean art.
Instead, prepare for works of introspection and solemnity – even as the ten pieces in the exhibition still radiate a Caribbean feel, a feeling of familiarity, with hints of the sea, fig leaves, coconut trees, pothounds and mangroves. The way the elements are included seems innate, rather than their being shoehorned into the paintings.
The exhibition, currently showing at LOFTT Gallery in Woodbrook, features the work of artists Bianca Peake, 28, Brian Ashing, 31, and Aurora Honeywell, 27. Together, their work speaks to identity, emotion and the deeply personal.
Ashing, the curator of the gallery, said the idea began with his wanting to bring together his contemporaries. Initially, he was not supposed to be part of it, but circumstances changed and he filled in.
The others were artists he found worked with a certain level of “emotional resonance” and who were willing to reveal their lives, observations and truths in their work
About the exhibition’s name, Such Things Exist, he said, “That’s what artists do. We observe, we ingest, we regurgitate, almost like storytellers in a way, giving testament to our existence and the existence of such things.”
Ashing, who has been exhibiting for about ten years, contributed four pieces to the show, using oil and chalk. He said the pieces were a slight deviation from his usual work in both colour palette and scale.
The catalogue explains, “Ashing confronts the emotional reticence so often expected of men, peeling back layers of cultural repression to reveal vulnerability, grief and the contradictions of masculine identity.
“His paintings suggest that what is hidden – softness, ache, tenderness – demands to be seen alongside strength and stoicism. His works aim to open a space where masculinity is neither monolithic nor invulnerable, but intricate, delicate and alive with tension.”
While technical, Ashing’s work is emotionally open, a reflection of his own evolving relationship with painting. Having completed a degree in environmental and natural resource management at UWI in 2020, he was largely self-taught, exploring watercolours and drawing before shifting to oil painting.
He began sharing his work on social media and participating in group shows. The late art dealer and curator Mark Pereira saw some of his work and offered him his first solo exhibition in 2021, just as he was transitioning from watercolours to oils. His early expressions, he said, were heavily influenced by the media he was consuming.
As he matured, he found that the things he wanted to paint and express began to look different. He started looking at European classical and Renaissance paintings and in 2023, travelled to Florence, Italy, for a portrait-painting workshop.
He had never been in an academic setting for art, and, realising he had a lot to learn, he said he felt extremely humbled, but it was a great feeling. When it was over, he felt like a different artist.
“I’d say that the works I’m showing in this show are almost a bit of unravelling of that strict, traditional methodology of painting. I guess you can’t really shake your knowledge of aesthetic principles.”
For Honeywell, her three pieces in oil and chalk are as much about identity as they are about self-acceptance and transformation. She explained that her intention was to channel something around identity and where she was at this point in her life, and the multiplicity of being human.
“You are always finding new versions of yourself, and you’re also always straddling…the highs and the lows of life, or the lights and the darks of life. You know what it means to be one thing, but also 50 other things, hold all of them at the same time, and continue to transform even further. And I think that’s what I was looking at when I made these works.”
For her, the paintings are an invitation to be vulnerable – a theme that weaves through the entire exhibition.
Honeywell had been telling people she would be an artist since she was five, but even after starting her degree in art and history at the University of Reading in England, she did not immediately decide when she would focus all her energy on it.
“I think I had a lot of life to live, and I always knew that I wanted to experience the world before I had something to say about it. And so in that moment, I was not like, ‘I’m ready to be an artist.’ It was more like, ‘I will be one.’”
Her final two years at university were completed remotely in Trinidad because of the covid19 pandemic. It was during that time that she began to seriously consider an art career, focusing more intently on her work and participating in shows.
She said for a long time, she had been concerned with what type of art people in Trinidad were making or would like. But in doing that, she learned what she did not want to do.
Now she is actively shedding those thoughts and deviating from the mould, doing work when she has something to say and doing it as honestly as possible.
Honeywell said even though the TT art scene was still relatively young compared to Europe’s and other countries’, and an artist could feel restricted in their expression here, she believed she was supposed to be an artist in Trinidad. She truly did not think her art would have developed as quickly if she had remained abroad.
“I was getting excited about getting involved in the art space in Trinidad. I think I felt way more inspired in my practice here than I ever did during university, if I’m being honest. Inspiration is on every, literally, every street if you’re an artist.
“And this is why so many artists that aren’t even from Trinidad come here and base here and have these very, very rich careers kind of based on the muse of Trinidad. It’s a good place to be if you’re an artist.”
She still wants to explore other artistic communities around the world, but for now, her creative base feels rooted at home.
Bianca Peake’s contributions, three paintings, continue a theme she has always pursued – exploring the tension within an inner, restricted world and its connection to the outside one.
“It’s like you’re going through your day to day, you have to deal with very practical things, but you have all of these restraints in your mind – restraints from other people, from your family, from yourself, from made-up things – self-imposed expectations. You’re dealing with all of these things on a day-to-day basis, and you can’t really process them all at once.
“So that’s what I do in my work. I’m trying to process that tension you’re feeling within yourself and the outside world.”
Peake described herself as creative from childhood. She was introverted and did not have many friends, living mostly in her imagination. She first wanted to be a writer to express that inner world, but, as a teenager, she fell in love with anime and manga, which shifted her focus to illustration.
She went to the Camberwell College of Arts in London, and there she switched from illustration, graduating with a degree in painting in 2019.
“It was a revolutionary experience for me. I discovered so many more things with painting that drawing wasn’t able to fully realise for me. It really changed my perspective on what was possible.”
She described the classes as conceptual: no one really taught students how to paint, but their work would be critiqued by their peers. That experience, she said, changed her entire understanding of what art could be. Since then, whatever she has shown has been an honest expression of herself, even if that something was “insincerity or insecurity.”
Peake said she returned to TT because it was the easiest thing for her to do, since she was aimless. But she became an adult in England, and wanted to see who she was an adult and an artist at home.
Although her work includes conceptual elements familiar to many Trinidadian artists, she does not deliberately push a Caribbean aesthetic.
Honeywell, on the other hand, said she enjoyed challenging people to accept and acknowledge different aesthetics of Caribbean art. In a few decades, she believed, their kind of work could become mainstream in TT.
About Such Things Exist, she said, “It’s very Trinidadian. It’s just Trinidadian in a flavour profile that people aren’t generally tasting.”
Ashing agreed: “It’s about just happening upon a different mode, a different flavour profile, according to Aurora, to use all of these elements that surround us, that inform our day-to-day, without us even internalising that they exist.”
For him, Such Things Exist exemplified a wider artistic society that was still growing. He said TT needed more consolidation of ideas within the local art community – his aim with Honeywell and Peake for all aspects of the show.
“When I approached Aurora and Bianca, I had the utmost confidence that they’re going to come with their best foot forward, as they always do. I felt even more encouraged and more pushed to keep up with them, and I feel like that’s such a successful thing for a show, to have this feeling of community.”
The three artists emphasised the importance of personal expression in their work. Together, they invite audiences to step away from preconceived notions of what Caribbean art “should” look like, and instead experience art’s depth, vulnerability and quiet strength.
Such Things Exist continues at LOFTT Gallery, Woodbrook, until November 1.
