Shas­tri Boodan

To­ba­go-based artiste Gail Pan­tin is us­ing the lock­down pe­ri­od to ex­pand her work and up­grade her skills. Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Pan­tin at her res­i­dence in Sig­nal Hill, To­ba­go, where she ab­sorbed the warm morn­ing sun­light creep­ing in­to her ve­ran­dah as she worked on sketch­es. Pan­tin has al­so used the cur­rent re­stric­tion pe­ri­od to cap­ture sun­sets and oth­er im­ages of To­ba­go life not on­ly with paint on can­vas but al­so with the cam­era. She of­fered some ad­vice to young artistes and per­sons who are now dis­cov­er­ing their skills as they have am­ple time on their hands.

“These days every­body is an artist; there are artists pop­ping up every­where and this is a good thing since we are all born with some lev­el of tal­ent. In times when mon­ey is scarce, artists now have to give more to their pa­trons,” the artist said. She went on to say that she has to con­stant­ly find a cut­ting edge that would be com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent to make her work mar­ketable.

She said, “I am try­ing to up my tech­nique, my skills. I would like to ad­vise all the up­com­ing artists to do the same. Mon­ey is some­thing peo­ple are find­ing hard­er to part with un­less they get re­al­ly good work. Peo­ple will still buy but give them some­thing more and be unique. Cre­ate that spe­cial piece that would stand out above the rest.” Pan­tin said hard eco­nom­ic times call for artists to be­come flex­i­ble, she jok­ing­ly added, “Mon­ey is mon­ey, if I’m get­ting a job to paint a wall or a chair I would do it.”

Pan­tin said dur­ing the lock­down she has re-start­ed do­ing a self por­trait dai­ly, a labour of love she did for 13 years be­fore trav­el­ling to Sin­ga­pore in the 1990s. She said she keeps busy by paint­ing the scenery, the hum­ming­birds and the goats that lit­ter the land­scape at Sig­nal Hill. Pan­tin has al­so done sev­er­al orig­i­nal post­cards with wa­ter­colour on heavy pa­per that de­pict scenes in To­ba­go.

Pan­tin said art ed­u­ca­tion would go far to­wards the aes­thet­ic de­vel­op­ment of in­di­vid­u­als and al­low them, not on­ly to ap­pre­ci­ate the cre­ative tal­ents of oth­ers but serve as an av­enue for peo­ple to main­tain their san­i­ty. She said laugh­ing­ly, “Es­pe­cial­ly now when you can’t get to a bar to re­lieve the stress of the day, per­sons with artis­tic and cre­ative skills can use this to chan­nel their en­er­gy and skills, un­til the good times roll back in.”

Pan­tin is the daugh­ter of To­bag­on­ian Kevin Pan­tin while her moth­er, Pa­tri­cia, is from Trinidad. Her style of art was great­ly in­flu­enced by the Caribbean and Asian cul­tures preva­lent in T&T. She at­tend­ed Holy Name Con­vent in Port-of-Spain where her in­ter­est in Asian cul­ture was ig­nit­ed. Pan­tin trav­elled to Asia in 1995 and lat­er re­turned to stay for two decades. Dur­ing this time she trav­elled and sketched while hold­ing a full-time teach­ing job in Sin­ga­pore.

Pan­tin was al­so very in­volved in var­i­ous artis­tic projects in Sin­ga­pore and she would use art to cap­ture var­i­ous mo­ments of Sin­ga­pore’s growth and change in­clud­ing the Wa­ter­front from the pe­ri­od 1998-2015.

Pan­tin said her work is per­ceived dif­fer­ent­ly through the eyes of vary­ing in­di­vid­u­als.