Wes­ley Gib­bings

Michael Booth­man’s cre­den­tials as a mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary “cre­ative” (his word) were once again es­tab­lished be­yond rea­son­able doubt in Ret­ro­spec­tive—a re­cent and mem­o­rable so­lo ex­hi­bi­tion host­ed by Arn­im’s Art Gallery in Port-of-Spain.

Karl Doyle’s cu­ra­to­r­i­al state­ment de­scribes the col­lec­tion of mul­ti­me­dia paint­ings and wood carv­ings as “an in­ti­mate vi­su­al jour­ney”.

Much like his mu­sic, for which 75-year-old Booth­man is more wide­ly recog­nised na­tion­al­ly—he is the hold­er of a Hum­ming­bird Medal (Gold)—there was much to res­onate in fa­mil­iar, in­ti­mate terms among vis­i­tors to the gallery.

Through a wide span of me­dia, artis­tic tech­niques, and re­al­is­tic and im­pres­sion­is­tic of­fer­ings, Booth­man’s art strikes chords that in­cite emo­tions as pow­er­ful­ly as the strings of his fa­mous gui­tar.

Some of this prompts the ques­tion: Are you a mu­si­cian who does art or are you an artist who does mu­sic? “It’s all in the blood,” he chuck­les, sur­round­ed as he was in his child­hood and young adult­hood by artis­tic par­ents and as nephew of the leg­endary Hold­er broth­ers—Boscoe and Ge­of­frey—who did every­thing.

For sure, the artist’s con­nec­tions with the world of mu­sic find abun­dant space in his work—gui­tars, key­boards, steel­pans, and brass in­stru­ments vi­su­al­ly aligned in sym­phon­ic mea­sures to ex­tract sub­lime emo­tions. Yet, there is even more to an­swer the ques­tion of which came first—the mu­sic or the art.

Doyle has some clues, “The same hands that paint or use a chis­el to lock vis­cer­al form in time can al­so use gui­tar strings to colour fleet­ing mo­ments with sound,” he says.

Through it all, there is love, joy, re­mem­brance, and plain, old-fash­ioned fun. Doyle notes Booth­man’s use of “bril­liant Caribbean colours” but there are al­so the mono­chromes of pen­cil and pas­tel ren­di­tions of an artist un­will­ing to yield to unipo­lar themes or plat­forms.

Face the Rhythm (com­plet­ed in 2017), for ex­am­ple, of­fers the raw­ness of emo­tion cap­tured in som­bre tones and colours while the mono­chro­mat­ic Face the Mu­sic of the same year chal­lenges the much ear­li­er Kyso­fu­sion of 2001 in its ex­pres­sion of the merg­ing of cre­ative mes­sages.

As a cre­ation of the artist, both through mu­sic and his vi­su­al art, there is every sense of Kyso­fu­sion’s mul­ti-tiered pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the con­tri­bu­tion of mu­sic to un­tan­gle mean­ing from dis­parate el­e­ments of dai­ly life.

Ret­ro­spec­tive fol­lows on Rhythm on Can­vas of 2019, as a so­lo ex­hi­bi­tion, and Booth­man’s con­tri­bu­tions to Art as Med­i­cine last Au­gust at the Stroke and Di­a­betes Cen­tre, as a stroke sur­vivor.

There is every rea­son for the work of this im­por­tant artist/mu­si­cian to be more ex­ten­sive­ly avail­able for pub­lic view­ing. Booth­man’s fin­ger­prints in­hab­it in­deli­ble space in the mu­si­cal his­to­ry of T&T and Ret­ro­spec­tive oc­cu­pies equal­ly valu­able ter­rain in the cre­ative fir­ma­ment.