Roslyn Car­ring­ton

"When I was about four or five," Re­bec­ca Fos­ter re­mem­bers, "my grand­moth­er gave me this mas­sive can­vas and some oil paints, and let me loose. That was my first piece." She adds with a rue­ful grin, "I had no idea what I was paint­ing." That mas­ter­piece now hangs with pride in her stu­dio. The tal­ent­ed artist is best known for her wa­ter­colour work, al­though it isn't her favourite medi­um. "When you make a mis­take, you can't paint over it," she ex­plains. But if she feels any un­cer­tain­ty with this me­dia, it's not im­me­di­ate­ly ap­par­ent. Her palette is stun­ning, with rich hues and deeply nu­anced tones. Many of her pieces cap­ture the fad­ing glo­ry of colo­nial ar­chi­tec­ture. One pet sub­ject is the Gin­ger­bread House, which now stands for­lorn and ne­glect­ed op­po­site the Sa­van­nah. "I'm ob­sessed with old ar­chi­tec­ture. I'd love to do a show based on­ly on this house; just dif­fer­ent an­gles that peo­ple nev­er see." Oth­er paint­ings are peo­pled by the denizens of J'Ou­vert. Moko jumbies, mid­night rob­bers, fan­cy sailors, dev­ils and Dames Lor­raine pierce the pur­ple shad­ows of the break­ing dawn like half-re­mem­bered dreams. Sur­re­al, evoca­tive, al­most un­nerv­ing, the fig­ures are buried in our col­lec­tive mem­o­ries of a Car­ni­val tra­di­tion that may not sur­vive the pass­ing of this gen­er­a­tion. Through­out school, and in­to ear­ly adult­hood, Fos­ter gave in to the ir­re­sistible urge to paint, but this was tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed with the pre­ma­ture birth of her sec­ond child, who re­quired sus­tained care for the first two years of his life. "That took a toll, and I didn't have any cre­ative out­let."

Once her chil­dren were both thriv­ing and in good health, her life was thrown in­to up­heaval a sec­ond time as she and her hus­band up­root­ed them­selves to move to Bahrain for what was ex­pect­ed to be a five-year en­gage­ment in the en­er­gy in­dus­try. They re­turned af­ter just a year, but the sep­a­ra­tion from her fa­mil­iar en­vi­ron­ment had giv­en her time to eval­u­ate her life and ex­plore her op­tions...and this is where her love af­fair with art meta­mor­phosed in­to a ca­reer. "When I was leav­ing Bahrain I had a one-night show and most of my pieces sold. It reignit­ed my pas­sion." She's of­ten hired to do por­traits of adults, chil­dren, and, she adds with a laugh, pets. One of her biggest com­mis­sions to date was a por­trait of the Prime Min­is­ter, which was pre­sent­ed to her in com­mem­o­ra­tion of the 2nd an­niver­sary of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship. Oth­er pieces were re­cent­ly gift­ed to a vis­it­ing Pana­man­ian pres­i­den­tial del­e­ga­tion. An­oth­er col­lec­tion of por­trai­ture she calls her Dead Mu­si­cians Club, fea­tur­ing the likes of Bob Mar­ley, Kurt Cobain, Amy Wine­house, and Jer­ry Gar­cia. "I love the hu­man fig­ure. Por­traits are some­thing I've al­ways en­joyed do­ing." Oc­ca­sion­al­ly, her colour­ing-blonde hair, blue eyes and peach-blush skin-come as a sur­prise to some, who au­to­mat­i­cal­ly ex­pect such pieces to from some­one who looks more "root­sy", but this born Tri­ni doesn't feel she has any­thing to apol­o­gise for. "I'd like to rep­re­sent Trinidad, pro­mote our cul­ture through the Car­ni­val scenes and the old build­ings. Peo­ple abroad al­so have a sense of nos­tal­gia." For this, she's found that so­cial me­dia is an in­valu­able re­source that gets her name, and her work, in­to the open.

Ever search­ing for out­lets for her cre­ativ­i­ty, Fos­ter has be­gun ex­plor­ing act­ing, tak­ing twice-week­ly live on­line class­es with the Tal­ent Fac­to­ry Film work­shop. She's about to take up a meaty role with an up­com­ing film called Amour, D&ea­cute;samour, which is part­ly fund­ed by UWI and is writ­ten co-di­rect­ed by uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­ers Dr. Savine Chinien and Dr. Tia Smith Coop­er. It ad­dress­es many so­cial is­sues fac­ing women in T&T to­day. She doesn't have a prob­lem mak­ing the leap from art to act­ing. "I don't want to sit down lat­er and think, 'What if? I should have tried this'. If there's an op­por­tu­ni­ty, why not take it?" Bal­anc­ing moth­er­hood with her work is her great­est chal­lenge, es­pe­cial­ly as her hus­band works over­seas for sev­er­al weeks at a time, but she does as much as she can when the chil­dren are in school. "I do have days when things aren't flow­ing, but I do try. You nev­er know when some­thing can come out of it. It's life, and you have to make it work." Fos­ter's most re­cent show­ing was held at the Y Gallery, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with three oth­er fe­male artists. It was, of course, called "Four." The show was a re­sound­ing suc­cess for all the artists, and her head is brim­ming with ideas for what's to come. Fos­ter's fu­ture looks as bright as her paint­ings. "I want my art out there. I want to take it slow­ly; I want to be around."