Winston Ian Stewart, better known as visual artist Sundiata, has been engaging with light in his art for decades. Except for some monochromatic renderings in ink or charcoal, which he may execute at night, he chooses to paint only during the daytime so that natural light becomes a crucial input in his work. It is the persistence of this light element in his art that he acknowledges in his new exhibition, Luminous."My studio is designed to capture the movement of the sun. The 10 am light will come in and the midday light. These affect my canvases. This exhibition is a celebration of that fact. I am not celebrating in a romantic way, though. Light informs and challenges what I am doing so I am celebrating in a real sense, through the work," Sundiata said.
The artist was born in Barbados but has lived in T&T since the 1970s. He has exhibited his work in the Caribbean, North America and Europe and has received awards for excellence in painting, drawing and sculpture.Like his past exhibitions, the new show draws the eye to colour. Intense blues and greens give life to paintings like Tassa & Hosay. Opaque applications of colour are juxtaposed with more transparent treatments. Raw, vibrant pigments mingle with more muted ones. Flat, smooth colours are articulated alongside roughly applied ones. In this presentation of colour, light dances, bounces, scatters, gets soaked up and is reflected.Sundiata said his attention to light in his two-dimensional works is not about chiaroscuro–the use of strong contrasts between highlights and dark shadows to illustrate form. For him, that is a limiting way of thinking about light. Instead, he is preoccupied with the relationship between light and various hues."Without light in all its manifestations, colour would be a nonentity. There is also the light that comes from colours–a light that informs and interferes with other colours. If you have a white canvas surface and you put to two colours and leave a part of the canvas unpainted, you will get a reflection of those colours on that white part of the canvas. Then there is the degree of reflection, so there is all of that happening in the work," he said.
"Your surface–canvas, paper and so on–is very important. It has a language of its own. Your job is not to kill the thing. It is to use it," he added.Along with drawings and paintings, his body of work includes wood sculpture in samaan, cedar, mahogany and sapodilla. Sundiata includes in this show a piece that pays tribute to the late sculptor Luise Kimme, who lived and created her art in Tobago for many years before her death in April. Light is also a key player in the three-dimensional works on display."Various types of wood reflect light differently. The colour and density of the wood grain affect light," he explained.Sundiata also uses light to convey mood. In pieces like On the Way, an atmosphere of sombre isolation is established. In other pieces, a liveliness is evident. His still lifes, for example, are far from still. He presents leaves and fruits in a spirited, dynamic way with light shimmering between and through powerful and often aggressive strokes.
With his celebration of light in his work, Sundiata admitted that he is still learning while moving to a more confident position. Part of that learning is deviating from some of the rules of image making and using artistic licence in a calculated way. "In the making of art, I think I have a better understanding of what the light is doing– much more than I knew years ago–and I can use that knowledge to produce art now that is more resolved, in a more artistic sense rather than a logical sense."
Luminous runs until October 17 at 101 Art Gallery, Holder's Studio, 84 Woodford Street, Newtown.