JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Sunday, July 27, 2025

Art in the eyes of the beholder

by

1794 days ago
20200829

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.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored