De­siree See­baran

Danielle Boodoo-For­tun&ea­cute; is ready to ex­hib­it her paint­ings as a col­lec­tion. But truth­ful­ly, she's been ex­hibit­ing on so­cial me­dia long be­fore now, which seems like putting the cart be­fore the horse in the art world. Or is it? "I do think that the col­lec­tion should be seen as a col­lec­tion. Be­cause peo­ple tend to share my work on­line a lot, even­tu­al­ly it reach­es the point where you don't even know who the artist is any more. But for me, what's re­al­ly spe­cial about shar­ing on Face­book and blogs is about peo­ple con­nect­ing with the art on a per­son­al lev­el. I feed off of that."

And she's re­ceived a lot of pos­i­tive feed­back from fans and from fel­low artists like not­ed artist and il­lus­tra­tor Shali­ni Seereer­am, who gave her "game-chang­ing ad­vice," Boodoo-For­tun&ea­cute; said. "She looked at my stuff and told me that I should go with my gut, be­cause the pieces that I felt most strong­ly about were the pieces that she thought were the strongest and the most mem­o­rable. She ad­vised me to get a jour­nal and sketch, sketch, sketch and let my style emerge. Af­ter talk­ing with her and meet­ing with her, that's when I re­al­ly start­ed do­ing what I want­ed to do."

Boodoo-For­tun&ea­cute;'s art is a mix of ethe­re­al wa­ter­colour and bold pen ink, show­ing hu­manoid fig­ures that are al­most al­ways el­e­men­tal. Grace­ful women, long-limbed and dark-eyed and mys­te­ri­ous, grow­ing out of tree trunks or set in gar­dens, hold­ing bowls of ripe fruit or clay jars filled with wind. "At the heart of it, there's an idea of the be­long­ing of the body to the land­scape," said the artist. She's diminu­tive and soft-spo­ken, but clear on her artis­tic vi­sion.

"I'm re­al­ly in­spired by the Trinida­di­an land­scape: the every­day, the small grow­ing things around us. And I like el­e­men­tal shapes; fig­ures recog­nis­able as hu­man but which still could be a plant or could a tree in shape. It's still an idea that I'm work­ing through."

On one of her paint­ings there's a line of orig­i­nal po­et­ry: "be­fore this life/i was a body bloomed from the sea/my heart an arch­i­pel­ago of po­ems." As a po­et, she's sim­i­lar­ly con­cerned with rur­al land­scapes and that fem­i­nine con­nec­tion to the el­e­ments. Her voice is sim­ple, vis­cer­al, or­gan­ic. And both her cre­ative nich­es, though seem­ing­ly sep­a­rate, are now feed­ing in­to one an­oth­er, she said. "The po­et­ry for me is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly vi­su­al and I find my­self in­clud­ing lines of po­et­ry in my art, which seems al­most nat­ur­al to the art now."

Her art is the de­vel­op­ment that's most sur­pris­ing to her, though. Most days, Boodoo-For­tun&ea­cute; gets up and spends her day paint­ing: a dream oc­cu­pa­tion that she nev­er ex­pect­ed to come true. Af­ter she earned a three at CXC art, she aban­doned her dream of be­ing an artist, fo­cus­ing a lit­tle more on writ­ing while at UWI. But there was a time when she let go both of her cre­ative dreams, and though she re­grets do­ing that, it brought her to a place of cre­ative clar­i­ty: "Af­ter a se­ries of events, I kind of be­gan re-eval­u­at­ing what I want­ed to do, what makes me hap­py and what my pur­pose is. And that's when I re­al­ly start­ed get­ting back in­to it.

"I am not good with dis­ap­point­ment, es­pe­cial­ly at first. But af­ter­ward, look­ing back per­haps some things were sup­posed to hap­pen as they did. Per­haps if I had gone ahead and done ter­tiary stud­ies in art, I wouldn't have de­vel­oped this style, or ex­per­i­ment­ed with the things I want­ed to ex­per­i­ment with." The 26-year-old's art has re­cent­ly be­come very pop­u­lar in the lo­cal un­der­ground art scene. She's been a reg­u­lar at craft fairs like the Wood­brook-based Up­mar­ket, and she con­tributes to na­tion­al mur­al projects and on­line pub­li­ca­tions like Anans­esem, a Caribbean chil­dren's mag­a­zine pub­lished on­line. She's com­mer­cialised her art to an ex­tent, pro­duc­ing small keep­sakes like key rings, paint­ed tote bags and book­marks un­der the name Wild­flower Stu­dio.

The art world is still di­vid­ed on com­mer­cial­is­ing art at the lev­el that Boodoo-For­tun&ea­cute; does it. She makes a dis­tinc­tion be­tween her col­lec­tion and her Wild­flower Stu­dio keep­sakes, but feels that com­mer­cial art is nec­es­sary, not just for the artist to make mon­ey, but to make art ac­ces­si­ble to every­one. "I went some­where and some­body was hold­ing up a paint­ing and say­ing, 'Wow, this re­al­ly speaks to me. I wish I could af­ford this.' I know all about that: look­ing at art and want­i­ng it so bad­ly and go­ing home and think­ing about it but know­ing that there's no way you could have it. I don't think that that's some­thing that's lim­it­ed to art crit­ics and peo­ple that study art."

Her po­et­ry is al­so gain­ing at­ten­tion. She's a fel­low of the Crop­per Foun­da­tion's ex­clu­sive res­i­den­tial work­shop for Caribbean writ­ers, a writer's re­treat held every two years that choos­es the best of emerg­ing Caribbean po­ets, play­wrights and fic­tion writ­ers to share and ed­it their work. She's pub­lished po­et­ry in sev­er­al jour­nals, in­clud­ing The Caribbean Writer, Bim, Tongues of the Ocean and the Dirt­cakes Jour­nal. "I got a re­sponse from New Lin­ear Per­spec­tives and the ed­i­tor said that he is sur­prised by my voice, which I don't un­der­stand but I'm re­al­ly flat­tered by," she said, laugh­ing.

Danielle Boodoo-For­tun&ea­cute; blogs her art and writ­ing on her Face­book fan page and on Half-Bro­ken Things: The art of Danielle Boodoo-For­tun&ea­cute;.