Gillian Moore

Artist and il­lus­tra­tor Col­in Boot­man has been busy. His lat­est book project, A Storm Called Ka­t­ri­na, was re­cent­ly re­leased to starred re­views. He's al­ready il­lus­trat­ed some 26 chil­dren's books, and now he's back home in Trinidad to share some of his paint­ings in an ex­hi­bi­tion this month, at De Gallery on Wood­ford Street, Port-of-Spain.

Peo­ple, places and colour

Boot­man left with his fam­i­ly for the Bronx, New York, when he was sev­en. He cites the in­flu­ences of those two very dif­fer­ent land­scapes as the main shap­ing forces be­hind his art. "There will al­ways be that du­al­i­ty in my work," he says, adding "my sub­ject mat­ter, my palate-they're some­times vi­brant, some­times dark. "A lot of the stuff that I've been do­ing has a Trinida­di­an sort of con­nect to it-if not in the back­grounds, in the peo­ple. It's al­so in my ap­proach, the way that I paint." And the way he paints is, ac­tu­al­ly, beau­ti­ful. His rich im­ages show re­al­is­tic rep­re­sen­ta­tions of life. Peo­ple of colour pop­u­late his paint­ings; there are street scenes, de­pic­tions of home and fam­i­ly, al­ways with a sense of warmth and a com­pas­sion­ate point of view, show­ing the in­her­ent dig­ni­ty of peo­ple.

New show

Boot­man's show at De Gallery is his sec­ond so­lo ex­hi­bi­tion here. He says it will "touch on dif­fer­ent as­pects of wom­an­hood: sen­su­al­i­ty, fer­til­i­ty, in­no­cence." It will al­so fea­ture scener­ies. He works main­ly in oils, but switch­es to wa­ter­colours on oc­ca­sion. "There are cer­tain books that have a light-heart­ed feel. Wa­ter­colours are a lot more spon­ta­neous. "With oils, the prep time and process are much more te­dious. So for more se­ri­ous sub­ject mat­ter, I choose oils."

Hor­ror of Ka­t­ri­na

"Se­ri­ous sub­ject mat­ter" is an apt de­scrip­tion for A Storm Called Ka­t­ri­na. Pub­lished by Peachtree Press, the book tells of a boy who ex­pe­ri­ences the dev­as­tat­ing storm that hit New Or­leans in the US in 2006. Boot­man and au­thor, My­ron Uhlberg, were rid­ing a wave of suc­cess af­ter their first book, Dad, Jack­ie and Me. They re­ceived the pres­ti­gious Amer­i­can Li­brary As­so­ci­a­tion's Schei­der Fam­i­ly Book Award at a cer­e­mo­ny in New Ore­ans, and were so af­fect­ed by the cat­a­stroph­ic scenes they wit­nessed, they felt they "had to do some­thing". "It was hor­rif­ic," he said. "We start­ed throw­ing ideas around," he said, and "af­ter a few changes and re­vi­sions" came up with the sto­ry and im­ages. The book man­ages to tell the sad tale with hu­man­i­ty and with­out sen­sa­tion­al­is­ing the is­sue. It's a sim­ple sto­ry that could en­gage any child's imag­i­na­tion. "I feel good about it," he said, adding, "so far the re­views have been stel­lar."

Boy Days

Boot­man now lives in Brook­lyn but comes back to T&T "fair­ly of­ten," ei­ther just vis­it­ing, or work­ing on arts projects. His next will be a col­lec­tion called Boy Days. He said it will aim to cap­ture the child­hood games played by lo­cal chil­dren of yes­ter­year, that are now dis­ap­pear­ing be­cause of tech­nol­o­gy and com­put­er games. Boot­man's art show will open with a re­cep­tion at De Gallery, from 6-8 pm. His books are not yet avail­able in T&T, but can be sourced on­line.