Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

"On my re­turn to T&T (1970) af­ter five years in Cana­da at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Al­ber­ta, I was stunned by the "light" here and I knew right away I had to cap­ture this. Tied in­to this were my child­hood ex­pe­ri­ences with my fa­ther through the coun­try­side and the coasts; I want­ed to cap­ture those scenes and their light and in wa­ter­colours that fas­ci­nat­ed me 60 years ago in the Cen­tral Li­brary."

Hink­son reach­es for a de­f­i­n­i­tion of that hard to de­fine, elu­sive qual­i­ty that de­scribes "light"; to do so he para­phras­es what Derek Wal­cott as art crit­ic said of his work dur­ing the po­et/play­wright's years of writ­ing for the Trinidad Guardian: "I am not talk­ing about light and shade or shad­ow and dark­ness and colour and so on, I am talk­ing about where the colour res­onates be­low the sur­face...where the dark­est dark shines."

To the plein air (land­scape) artist, light is an elu­sive chal­lenge: "It's not just bright­ness, it's a qual­i­ty of re­flect­ed heat and glare com­bined, which varies with the time of day and year and the en­vi­ron­ment. So even in the dark pur­ples there is still a sense of a vi­brat­ing light com­ing through," says Hink­son.

Next time you view a Hink­son wa­ter­colour paint­ing, look be­neath the sur­face for the light. It may even be that the artist is en­cour­ag­ing us to dig be­neath the sur­face for deep­er mean­ing; for some truth about our ex­is­tence.

In the same breath, how­ev­er, Hink­son urges that his work si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly cel­e­brates the recog­nis­able im­ages de­pict­ed and the shared emo­tions they evoke; many of those im­ages came out of his ear­ly years in Cobo Town.

For the unini­ti­at­ed in the so­cial and phys­i­cal ge­og­ra­phy of Port-of-Spain in the 1930s in­to the 1970s, Cobo Town was that por­tion of the old city from Rich­mond and Duke streets, go­ing south to Charles, Sackville and Lon­don streets and stretch­ing west to Wright­son Road. On the south-east of Cobo Town was Don­key City, and on its north-west the more gen­tri­fied homes. The name came from the vul­tures that feast­ed on the waste of the fish mar­ket in the area.

From the fam­i­ly home sit­u­at­ed at Rich­mond and Charles Streets, Hink­son and his fam­i­ly ex­pe­ri­enced Red Army/Mer­ry Mak­ers on J'Ou­vert morn­ing, Pre­tender (Preed­ie) the ca­lyp­son­ian, and the "bad-johns" of the era who pro­tect­ed the steel­bands and the com­mu­ni­ty from those who would ven­ture in­to the ter­ri­to­ry.

For the boys grow­ing up there, both from the mid­dle and bar­rack yard so­cial class­es, crick­et and foot­ball in the sa­van­nah topped the agen­da of play. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly, they would "tief" a chance to play in Vic­to­ria Square, where games were banned in a black and white sign, but where berry war was com­pul­sive giv­en the mil­lions of yel­low berries on the ground wait­ing to be stoned by boys one against the oth­er.

"Based on my back­ground in Cobo Town and our gen­uine ca­ma­raderie with the poor­er boys, my aware­ness of how the dis­ad­van­taged lived and even my ad­mi­ra­tion for how they sur­vived in­spired my predilec­tion for cap­tur­ing plein air (the land­scape), the light, and the ar­chi­tec­ture of this en­vi­ron­ment, the bar­rack yards and al­so the grander hous­es of the plan­ta­tion type."

A com­mis­sion he re­ceived from the gov­ern­ment in 1982 al­lowed Hink­son to cap­ture tra­di­tion­al ar­chi­tec­ture of town and coun­try. It re­sult­ed in 100 draw­ings in con­te cray­on and wa­ter­colours which are in the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um and gov­ern­ment of­fices; the con­tours of the paint­ings do not fol­low the pre­cise lines of the ar­chi­tec­ture, but like his main works of the time, are clos­er to that of the im­pres­sion­ist school of paint­ing in which lines and shapes are more freely ren­dered to suit the painter's im­pres­sion of re­al­i­ty.

It is a style that Hink­son adopt­ed ear­ly in his ca­reer af­ter the French Im­pres­sion­ists painters of the last quar­ter of the 19th cen­tu­ry: Claude Mon­et, Paul Cezanne and oth­ers who broke with the con­ven­tion­al paint­ing styles and sub­jects and adopt­ed bright colours and light of the out­doors in their land­scapes.

A fea­ture of Hink­son's work is how he al­lows the view­er to see be­yond the ob­vi­ous; like the paint­ing of the fish­er­man at his stand at the en­trance to Pi­geon Point. On the can­vas, Hink­son draws our at­ten­tion to the skill­ful­ness and dis­ci­pline of the fish­er­man.

"So I am say­ing, don't un­der­es­ti­mate that man, he is do­ing a great job, he's skill­ful, hum­ble and he is valu­able."

Hink­son tells of an out­door ex­pe­ri­ence in John John of ask­ing for per­mis­sion to draw a par­tic­u­lar house and re­ceiv­ing a per­func­to­ry/offhand­ed sign to go ahead from a stern-look­ing, silent young man.

"The man even­tu­al­ly came out, bare-backed, and with scars now vis­i­ble on his face, to hold an um­brel­la over me on a hot Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon," says Hink­son. Clear­ly, the man ap­pre­ci­at­ed that a painter cap­tur­ing his world had val­ue and had to be pro­tect­ed.

Jack­ie's tal­ent for paint­ing first emerged and was de­vel­oped at Queen's Roy­al Col­lege in the 1950s. There he be­came as­so­ci­at­ed with an­oth­er as­pir­ing artist, one Pe­ter Min­shall: one be­came a mas­ter de­sign­er of the street the­atre–"the mas"; the oth­er the pre­mier wa­ter­colourist of T&T.

Paint­ing in wa­ter­colours, notwith­stand­ing its dis­tin­guished tra­di­tion go­ing back more than 150 years, has been and, to some ex­tent, con­tin­ues to be viewed with some skep­ti­cism and non-ac­cep­tance here in T&T–it's not oil on can­vas, not the "re­al thing," ac­cord­ing to the skep­tics. But con­trary to this view, paint­ing in wa­ter­colours is con­sid­ered the most de­mand­ing genre: "It's an un­for­giv­ing medi­um.

The pa­per can take on­ly so much lay­er­ing of paint, and the artist has very lit­tle room for mak­ing changes as op­posed to paint­ing in oil which can be ad­just­ed time and again to get the right colour, tone and feel," says the wa­ter­colourist.

Hink­son's range of sub­ject mat­ter has ex­pand­ed over the decades. His keen­er ob­ser­va­tion of his so­ci­ety, of hu­man con­duct, of grow­ing in­di­vid­u­al­ism, and the chang­ing role of women are now more vig­or­ous­ly re­flect­ed in his land­scapes.

"I de­cid­ed I had to make the hu­man fig­ure more cen­tral to my work, and I need­ed to work larg­er so I need­ed to re­vert to oils; that was some-time in the 1980s and I pro­duced a num­ber of very large paint­ings, held an ex­hi­bi­tion at QR­Cwhere the hu­man fig­ure played a much greater cen­tral role."

Does Jack­ie Hink­son, af­ter 55 years of paint­ing, still get chal­lenges from his work?

"What! Con­stant­ly; it's a source of chal­lenge. I still see it as hard, hard work; it frus­trates me. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly I feel good about a fin­ished work. But I in­tend to con­tin­ue paint­ing, I can't do any­thing else. I know that as long as I am aware of what's hap­pen­ing around me, I would be dri­ven to ex­press and to re­flect that in my work; apart from fam­i­ly, that's my life."

His life has not been the ro­man­tic one of the artist cre­at­ing in fits and starts and liv­ing on the edge. In­stead, brought up in sol­id fam­i­ly cir­cum­stances, Jack­ie has been the re­spon­si­ble fam­i­ly man.He has worked and planned for a qual­i­ty of ma­te­r­i­al life with and for his fam­i­ly.

As to his re­flec­tions on our civil­i­sa­tion, like many, he is de­pressed by its com­mer­cial vul­gar­i­ty, de­pict­ed for in­stance on the bill­boards scat­tered across the land­scape, and many oth­er as­pects of con­tem­po­rary so­ci­ety that re­flect a grow­ing in­hu­man­i­ty.

"We need to ex­pose young peo­ple to the ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the arts in their ed­u­ca­tion, have more of them be­come artists, mu­si­cians, writ­ers, or at least to be­come more aware of the hu­man con­di­tion," the artist feels.

On av­er­age, Hink­son con­tin­ues to work at least five hours a day, whether paint­ing, sketch­ing, sculpt­ing or even more re­cent­ly, ex­plor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties of dig­i­tal art on his iPad. Does he feel sat­is­fied with his achieve­ments over the decades?

"I al­ways feel I could have done it bet­ter; I could have done more, and that there is more to be done; but I am fear­ful that I won't get it done."