Gillian Cal­iste

It was not that the pain and dev­as­ta­tion felt by many dur­ing the pan­dem­ic did not af­fect artist Don­ald “Jack­ie” Hink­son. It was more so that the un­prece­dent­ed event did lit­tle to throw him out of his el­e­ment.

At 80 years old, Hink­son is a dis­tin­guished Trinidad and To­ba­go artist who has kept the com­pa­ny of Caribbean art lu­mi­nar­ies like Derek Wal­cott, Pe­ter Min­shall and Pat Bish­op. The lock­downs with its lack of noise and traf­fic that tossed most peo­ple in­to a tail­spin and forced many in­to self-in­tro­spec­tion dur­ing the last two years, were not alien to Hink­son who has spent a life­time com­muning with and con­tem­plat­ing na­ture, Trinidad and To­ba­go so­ci­ety...and him­self.

Through lu­cid mem­o­ries and in­sights, the artist re­cent­ly of­fered Sun­day Guardian a win­dow in­to his jour­ney and lifestyle.

“Be­cause of the na­ture of my pro­fes­sion and vo­ca­tion which is to pro­duce art, the pan­dem­ic in a sense hasn't re­al­ly taught me any­thing. This is go­ing to sound sur­pris­ing...it has re­mind­ed me about the fragili­ty of life and how much in the ex­e­cu­tion of my work, how much I am not de­pen­dent on a lot of every­day things like traf­fic and the open­ing of this store etc. I can still func­tion ful­ly as an artist, iso­lat­ed. I was still sur­round­ed by forms, shapes, colours, tones, paints even in a se­vere lock­down which I sus­pect was not the same for every­one else,” Hink­son said.

As an artist, his main con­cern is “cap­tur­ing the light”; har­ness­ing those al­most in­de­scrib­able qual­i­ties that give T&T's places, peo­ple and is­sues their en­er­gy, vi­bran­cy and essence...qual­i­ties that ex­cite the view­er. One's tech­nique in cap­tur­ing the light is the true mark of a great artist, not one's sur­face sub­ject mat­ter or mes­sage, he in­sists.

“Back in Times” by Jackie Hinkson can be considered a modern-day, local crucifixion.

“The ques­tion is what is good art, and my point is that lev­el of com­mu­ni­ca­tion through sur­face im­ages, that kind of mes­sage con­tent is not enough to make good art. That im­agery has to work to­geth­er with the ma­nip­u­la­tion of vi­su­al sym­bols like colour, rhythm, tones, jux­ta­po­si­tions, and com­po­si­tions. And it's on­ly when those two come to­geth­er suc­cess­ful­ly–to use a vague word–that it be­comes good art,” he said.

Ex­pand­ing his me­dia over the years from wa­ter­colour to ink, pen­cil, con­te cray­on, fig­u­ra­tive wood sculp­tures, and iPad dig­i­tal art Hink­son moved from more sub­tle to “di­rect” com­men­tary on T&T's his­tor­i­cal past, ar­chi­tec­ture, scenery, so­ci­ety and pol­i­tics. His de­vel­op­ment nev­er ends, he said. In fact, rather than see­ing him­self as im­prov­ing, he sees him­self as con­stant­ly evolv­ing.

“I live with a con­stant con­vic­tion that I have not done well enough, that I could have done bet­ter,” he ex­plained.

From his pri­ma­ry school days of draw­ing cow­boys and hors­es from com­ic books in Cobo Town, Port-of-Spain, and ab­sorb­ing the co­conut tree-lined land­scapes of Man­zanil­la, Ma­yaro and Guayagya­yare in the East, and Erin, Ce­dros and Ica­cos in the South­west on trips with his trav­el­ling of­fi­cer fa­ther and broth­ers, Hink­son nur­tured a love for art. Apart from land­scapes, gin­ger­bread ar­chi­tec­ture like the gable roof and lat­tice­work of the house he shared with his par­ents and five sib­lings al­so cap­tured his fan­cy.

Ex­plor­ing art books at the Cen­tral Li­brary as a 14-year-old QRC stu­dent deep­ened Hink­son's con­nec­tion with art and he start­ed paint­ing with oils. He found that fel­low stu­dent Pe­ter Min­shall, who was one Form class ahead of him al­so shared his in­ter­est and the two would fre­quent­ly em­bark on trips to the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Sealots, Hink­son's yard at Rich­mond Street and Min­shall's yard at Dun­don­ald Street to paint. Min­shall's fa­ther, Wil­son, an ac­com­plished artist, would give them point­ers and the two youths cher­ished dreams of de­vel­op­ing their craft abroad.

Through the Art So­ci­ety, Hink­son was al­so ex­posed to the works of lo­cal artists like Carlisle Chang, Sybil At­teck, MP Al­ladin, Boscoe Hold­er, the Stollmey­ers and the Sal­va­toris. En­cour­aged by At­teck and Al­ladin, in 1961, in a move which would have been seen as bold for their time, Hink­son who was in Form Six at that point, joined up with Min­shall, who was al­ready out of school, a young Pat Bish­op and a few oth­er artists to ex­hib­it their work at the Wood­brook Mar­ket Place, a cen­tre for the Arts So­ci­ety back then.

A schol­ar­ship to the Académie Julien in Paris in 1963 would launch Hink­son's dreams of be­com­ing an artist, and Min­shall, too, would pur­sue his art ed­u­ca­tion over­seas. They set off from Trinidad on the same French boat, with Min­shall be­ing dropped off at a Port in Eng­land. Hink­son would be­gin a Fine Arts de­gree at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Al­ber­ta, Cana­da, two years lat­er.

“On my re­turn to Trinidad in 1970, the light, the heat and the hu­mid­i­ty I found here were so strong, this is when I said: Yes, I have to go out there, and I have to paint in wa­ter­colours,” the artist re­called.

“Feast in the Recreation Club” is Jackie Hinkson's local take on the Last Supper.

Hink­son's work over the decades spans land­scapes and seascapes through­out T&T, a place where the re­la­tion­ship be­tween light and shad­ows, tone and mood change rapid­ly and where one hour can mean the dif­fer­ence be­tween warm, vi­brant reds, or­anges and yel­lows in the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah or heavy greys and dingy blues brought by pass­ing clouds. Wa­ter­colour bril­liant­ly con­veys a par­tic­u­lar qual­i­ty of light at a par­tic­u­lar time of day, but there is lit­tle room for er­ror, Hink­son explained.

He has paint­ed scenes in Laven­tille and vis­it­ed pa­n­yards where he could eas­i­ly pull out a pen and pa­per and cap­ture the rapid move­ments of pan­men in their nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment, as well as the re­ac­tions of spec­ta­tors. Among his thou­sands of paint­ings and draw­ings are his­tor­i­cal build­ings mag­nif­i­cent­ly cap­tured in pen, con­te cray­on and pen­cil.

An hon­orary grad­u­ate of the UWI for his no­table con­tri­bu­tion to art, Hink­son's most re­cent pub­lic show­ing was “Mas­quer­ade” a 110-foot mur­al trac­ing as­pects of T&T's his­to­ry, and si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly the artist's cre­ative evo­lu­tion. It was mount­ed in 2019 on the front wall of UWI's Al­ma Jor­don Li­brary. In it, tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val char­ac­ters like mid­night rob­bers, their hats im­print­ed with Colum­bus' three ships and a Bur­ro­keet danced by Queen Is­abel­la of Spain in murky, omi­nous tones speak of the ex­ploita­tion of this coun­try's colo­nial past. He ren­ders pan round d' neck play­ers in ac­tion in front of old-time par­lours from his child­hood with live­li­er tones, giv­ing way fur­ther on to more bla­tant im­ages of po­lit­i­cal and so­cial ten­sion like pro­test­ers in front of the Red House and the Roy­al Jail.

Next year, Hink­son plans to col­lab­o­rate with a tech­ni­cian to bring to life and dis­play ab­stract sculp­tures, the draw­ings which he has kept since his uni­ver­si­ty days some 60 years ago.

Mak­ing his dreams ma­te­ri­alise no mat­ter how long it takes has al­ways been part of Hink­son's na­ture. Al­though he as­pired to be­come a full-time artist, he held on as an Art teacher at his al­ma mater for 14 years to en­sure that he and his wife Caryl could pro­vide for their chil­dren, Sean, David and Deb­o­rah.

Jackie Hinkson painting outdoors in the early 1960s.

Hink­son “slow­ly” built up a rep­u­ta­tion ex­hibit­ing his paint­ings when­ev­er he could and though un­sure of how he would earn a sub­stan­tial in­come, he made the break to fol­low his true pas­sion in 1986.

“You have to un­der­stand that you have to take risks, make sac­ri­fices. You have to have the con­vic­tion of what you want to do.”

He recog­nis­es such sac­ri­fice, sup­port and ded­i­ca­tion in his wife of 55 years, and in his chil­dren whom he would pack up dur­ing school hol­i­days for month-long trips to Ma­yaro to ful­fil his yearn­ing to paint. For Caryl, dri­ving back west to St Au­gus­tine to her job dur­ing those times and deal­ing with a hus­band who spent count­less hours out­doors paint­ing could not have been easy, he felt. Still, he was proud of the lega­cy of art knowl­edge and prowess passed on to his chil­dren.

Hink­son who still main­tains con­tact with his friend Min­shall was grate­ful to Pat Bish­op as “an in­valu­able and gen­er­ous con­trib­u­tor” to his ca­reer and artist Sun­di­a­ta who shared Hink­son's per­spec­tives on art and with whom he has of­ten col­lab­o­rat­ed and ex­hib­it­ed since the 1980s.

Young artists, Hink­son said, must be pre­pared to work for a life­time; there's no be­gin­ning or end or peak, just evo­lu­tion. He hopes to see greater pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion about Vi­su­al Arts and uni­ty in the art com­mu­ni­ty and would be hap­py if his work lives on. He sim­ply wants to be re­mem­bered for hav­ing tried.

Jackie Hinkson in a lively discussion with Peter Minshall, left, Hinkson's son and biographer Prof Arnold Rampersad, right.

Q&A with Jack­ie Hink­son

1. Mr Hink­son, you grew up in the 1940s and 50s, and along with your broth­ers, you ac­com­pa­nied your fa­ther on trips through­out the coun­try while he worked as a trav­el­ling of­fi­cer. What sort of places did you all vis­it and how did your art de­vel­op as a re­sult?

My fa­ther was, as you say, a trav­el­ling of­fi­cer. He worked with the Cus­toms and his job had to do with co­pra and price con­trol; co­pra be­ing a prod­uct of co­conuts. And I sup­pose, him be­ing a coun­try­man him­self–he grew up in Cen­tral Trinidad in Bras­so and so on–he prob­a­bly rel­ished the job of trav­el­ling in­to the coun­try ar­eas and at school hol­i­day time when I was about eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, he would take the boys, my two old­er broth­ers and me and maybe my younger broth­er, with him.

The in­ter­est­ing thing is the car he had was a 1932 Mod­el A Forde that had a rum­ble seat in the back; that is a curved back that just pulled open and be­came a seat. And we sat in the back there ex­posed to the el­e­ments– some­thing like a con­vert­ible–with a piece of tar­pau­lin in case rain came. And it meant that we were al­ways look­ing out; I cer­tain­ly was al­ways look­ing out at the land­scape and I sus­pect that those ex­pe­ri­ences left a per­ma­nent kind of im­pres­sion and per­haps pre­dis­posed me to want to work out­doors and do plein air land­scape paint­ing.

A 2018 panyard sketch by Jackie Hinkson.

2. You be­came in­ter­est­ed in go­ing to the pub­lic li­brary, ad­mir­ing the work of post-im­pres­sion­ists like Cézanne and wa­ter­colourists. How ex­act­ly did wa­ter­colour be­come your sig­na­ture medi­um?

It was the Cen­tral Li­brary that was sit­u­at­ed on Queen's Park East and that is where I went as a teenag­er. I re­alised I was in­ter­est­ed in art, I went look­ing for books. Of course, we had no tele­vi­sion, we had no iPad, and no YouTube, so you go look­ing for books and it was there that I dis­cov­ered books on in­ter­na­tion­al art, West­ern art and so on. There were no books on lo­cal art. It was there that I saw these works of im­pres­sion­ist painters who paint­ed out­doors in the light and I guess, that is what at­tract­ed me; the idea that these fel­las went out­doors and paint­ed the light that was in front of them, they dealt with the every­day out­door life.

In ad­di­tion, I came across one or two on Eng­lish wa­ter­colourists and what re­al­ly hit me hard was the lu­mi­nos­i­ty that I saw in these im­ages. Wa­ter­colour is a trans­par­ent medi­um. It's not like oil paint which is an opaque medi­um where if you want­ed to make a blue in­to light blue, you mix white and paint it on phys­i­cal­ly. It's a medi­um where the white of the pa­per func­tions as white, so when you want some light colour or tone, you use less pig­ment, and more wa­ter and you let the white of the pa­per come through the wash. And that is what gives wa­ter­colour its lu­mi­nos­i­ty and trans­paren­cy. That left a deep im­pres­sion on me, and al­so the fact that these books were about land­scapes, so when it was time to tack­le our land­scape and so on, I in­stinc­tive­ly went to­wards wa­ter­colour.

3. You seemed to have tak­en on the role of so­cial com­men­ta­tor more and more. How have you de­vel­oped your tech­ni­cal style and sub­ject mat­ter over the years?

As a teenag­er liv­ing in the se­cu­ri­ty of a home with my par­ents, I would paint as I see them in the house; pots, chairs, in­te­ri­ors, but what I want to be care­ful about is that even when I was draw­ing tra­di­tion­al ar­chi­tec­ture and so on– be­cause I did a lot of that up in ar­eas like Laven­tille and John John in the 60s and 70s, the ques­tion of what art is a such a com­plex one, one that I can­not claim to ful­ly un­der­stand, that when you ask about my move to­wards so­cial com­men­tary, I think that even when I paint­ed or drew a build­ing, an old house, an es­tate house or any­thing, in there, there is some kind of com­men­tary, some kind of mes­sage...the kind of mood that I brought in­to the paint­ings, through colours, tonal jux­ta­po­si­tions, types of clouds in the sky, all of that could hint that I mak­ing some kind of com­men­tary about life. I'm show­ing you how sub­tle it could be.

A watercolour painting of Mayaro, 1980s by Jackie Hinkson.

But you're quite right, at some point, I be­gan a greater fo­cus, at least on the sur­face, on so­cial com­men­tary. In my im­agery for ex­am­ple, what I showed was not hous­es or trees or sea or sky. It was peo­ple, some might be po­lice, some might be vic­tims, some might be hint­ing at vi­o­lence, and some might be talk­ing about po­lit­i­cal bat­tles. So the ref­er­ence to so­cial com­men­tary was more ob­vi­ous and di­rect.

4. Please talk about your tran­si­tion/ex­pan­sion from wa­ter­colour to ink sketch­es, con­te cray­on to fig­u­ra­tive wood sculp­tures.

I find that a cer­tain medi­um suits a cer­tain kind of sub­ject. If I'm draw­ing some big old build­ing that is main­ly wood and gal­vanise, the con­te cray­on is a red­dish brown colour and I find that it suits the cap­tur­ing of the qual­i­ty of wood and gal­vanise ad­mirably. But if I'm out­doors in a place like Ma­yaro with the re­flect­ed light of sky and sea and sand and so on, I would go for the wash­es of wa­ter­colour, and al­so to cap­ture that qual­i­ty of light quick­ly be­fore it changes. For a mur­al, I would go for a paint that I can work with on a large scale, like acrylic or oil.

At uni­ver­si­ty, in my sec­ond or third year, I was in­tro­duced to sculp­ture and I found I had a feel for it. I liked the idea of con­ceiv­ing in three di­men­sions but at the time the dom­i­nant in­ter­na­tion­al move was ab­stract with min­i­mal sculp­ture. When I re­turned home in 1970 and want­ed to con­tin­ue to work in 3D, I didn't have the equip­ment, the space, or the mon­ey so I took a sum­mer course to learn the ba­sics of wood carv­ing.

5. You have ex­changed thoughts on art with artis­tic leg­ends like Pe­ter Min­shall and Derek Wal­cott, do you re­call any mem­o­rable mo­ments or words of wis­dom shared with ei­ther?

Derek made a com­ment I will nev­er for­get. He said artists are known for their light, not for their caus­es. He was try­ing to say it's the qual­i­ty of light in the artist's work that de­ter­mines how pow­er­ful it is and not the mes­sage that of­ten at­tracts at­ten­tion.

6. Do you think peo­ple's at­ti­tudes in T&T to­wards art and artists have changed over the years? How so?

Jackie Hinkson with his wife, Caryl and children.

It turned out that in sub­se­quent years I sur­vived; some­times well, some­times not so well. Even­tu­al­ly, I got good sup­port and com­mis­sions, and peo­ple be­gan to buy my work. What re­al­ly helped was the suc­ces­sive oil booms, but back in the 1950s and so on, the wealth was not there.

But as the oil booms came and peo­ple be­gan to trav­el and be­come more so­phis­ti­cat­ed and see mu­se­ums and cor­po­rate bod­ies be­came more aware of re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, things blos­somed more and here we are to­day. Who knows where the fu­ture is head­ing? Gov­ern­ment has al­so poured more mon­ey in­to cre­ative ar­eas, gal­leries have blos­somed, so gen­er­al­ly, there is in­creased sen­si­tiv­i­ty and aware­ness and so­phis­ti­ca­tion.

When I was a teenag­er, the art crit­ic here was Derek Wal­cott. He stud­ied art, he knew about the his­to­ry of art and when Derek wrote about an ex­hi­bi­tion, he wrote with knowl­edge and skill. To me, the biggest tragedy is that what I found some­where in the 70s go­ing in­to the 80s, is that there was less pres­ence of knowl­edge­able cri­tiquing. There was a less­en­ing com­mit­ment from the me­dia to iden­ti­fy and make sure that ex­hi­bi­tions were re­viewed in a con­sis­tent, knowl­edge­able way. The pub­lic is not be­ing ed­u­cat­ed and al­so what de­vel­oped in the 80s, groups of artists were re­turn­ing home and you be­gan to get cliques form­ing–we are for this kind of art, you are not this kind of art. I meet peo­ple who will not go to a gallery be­cause they don't like the cu­ra­tor and then there are is­sues like po­lit­i­cal con­nec­tions in the me­dia; which group has sup­port or con­nec­tions in the me­dia, to the point where the art com­mu­ni­ty has be­come much big­ger but frag­ment­ed to my mind.