Jackie Hinkson is the quintessential Caribbean Artist.  A national of Trinidad & Tobago, he has for decades been a painter and interpreter of the landscape, seascape, architecture and people of his country and of the regions' islands, in watercolours, oils, acrylics, ink, pencil and crayon and in his sculpture and murals.

Hinkson is no closer to adequately explaining his art now than he was decades ago.  He sees art as a complex process and believes a work can simultaneously have several layers of interrelated meanings.  This makes it difficult to verbally interpret art and very easy to misinform. One of these layers of meanings is communicated through imagery, which can be literal and/or symbolic. In plein-air painting, once he has decided on his subject matter, and this he does instinctively, his total focus shifts to technical considerations.
He edits, distorts and simplifies. He searches for the correct weight of tone, for the correct juxtaposition of shape, for the right light.

And it is this intuitive search for a particular light and mood that has characterized his career as a painter. For him a wall, a roof, a shadow, a doorway, a cloud, a strip of sea all have the potential to function as light, tone and abstract shape while simultaneously evoking symbolic meaning. In his studio painting, murals and sculpture, his intuitive approach also dominates.

He thinks there is an increasing tendency in contemporary art to emphasise the didactic, to support causes. This compels artists to overexplain their art to an understandably insecure public.

For him, in the end, meaning in the work must come through as something felt rather than analysed.

UPCOMING EXHIBITION:

101 Art Gallery 6 - 18 Sept 2014