Res­i­dents decked out in their Sun­day best en­joy­ing a stroll along the main street in front of what could eas­i­ly be the main com­mu­ni­ty hall ma­jes­ti­cal­ly stand­ing out from the oth­er build­ings - it is a sig­na­ture scene of lo­cal art, but one with James “Jim” Arm­strong’s own spe­cial in­ter­pre­ta­tion, which he has termed as “in­dige­nous im­pres­sion­ism.”

Specif­i­cal­ly, it is a fu­sion of a style per­fect­ed by Eu­ro­pean im­pres­sion­ists and the essence of Trinidad and To­ba­go her­itage, cul­ture and so­ci­ety. This is an ex­am­ple of the works that will be on dis­play dur­ing Arm­strong’s In­no­va­tions in Art ex­hi­bi­tion which will be staged at the Art So­ci­ety of T&T, 3-7 St. Vin­cent Av­enue, Fed­er­a­tion Park, from Ju­ly 15 to 19.

Vis­i­tors to this show will al­so be ex­posed to the artist’s pen­chant for ab­stract im­agery, which is typ­i­fied by his blurred recre­ations of African-type dancers that are in­fused with tech­niques com­mu­ni­cat­ed by his mas­tery of move­ment: a method­ol­o­gy that Arm­strong has per­fect­ed over a pe­ri­od of six-plus decades in art.

In ad­di­tion, there will al­so be his newest cop­per and alu­minum cre­ations with­in the same space.

Arm­strong’s ca­reer in­cludes his first so­lo ex­po­si­tion in 1965 in his na­tive To­ba­go and it is one that even­tu­al­ly branched out to­wards in­ter­na­tion­al shows across Africa – where he lived for sev­er­al years – Eu­rope, the Amer­i­c­as and the Caribbean.

This lat­est show, which will be his eleventh since his re­turn to T&T in 2000, will in­volve a two-hour of­fi­cial open­ing from 6 to 8 pm on Ju­ly 15 at the Art So­ci­ety, where it will op­er­ate from Tues­day to Fri­day, 12 pm to 6 pm, un­til the event’s fi­nal day on Ju­ly 19.

Those in­ter­est­ed in a pri­vate view­ing of the works can send a What­sApp mes­sage to Dul­cie Nieves via 686-7943 or send an email to dul­cie.nieves@gmail.com

Artist State­ment

I be­gan paint­ing in To­ba­go as a child, in­spired by my grand­moth­er, “Teacher Willie.” In 1961, I co-found­ed the To­ba­go Art Group and held my first so­lo ex­hi­bi­tion in 1965.

My stud­ies in de­sign and ar­chi­tec­ture took me abroad and a ca­reer with the Unit­ed Na­tions al­lowed me to live, paint and ex­hib­it across the globe.

Since re­turn­ing home in 2000, I’ve fo­cused full-time on my art, ex­plor­ing move­ment, tex­ture, and colour. My re­cent work in­cludes ex­per­i­ments on cop­per and coat­ed alu­minum, blend­ing tra­di­tion­al style with con­tem­po­rary tech­nique.

In 2024, I was ho­n­oured with the Hum­ming­bird Medal (Gold) for con­tri­bu­tions to Art and Pub­lic Ser­vice.