The About Face catalogue allows you to explore the work and biographies of the 30 artists included in the original Face of Jamaica exhibition that toured Germany and the UK between 1963 and 1964. Scroll through pages sorted by surnames alphabetically.
ROGER MAIS (1905-1955)
Born 1905, Kingston, Jamaica. As a painter and writer he contributed to the development of modern art and literature in Jamaica in the 1950s. Exhibited locally and internationally.
Siesta
1952
Private Collection, Kingston
Image courtesy of John Maxwell
EDNA MANLEY (1900-1987)
Born 1900, Bournemouth, England. Attended St. Martin's School of Art, London. Married Norman Manley: in 1922 moved to Jamaica with him. Exhibited locally and internationally. Received numerous awards including Gold Musgrave Medal, 1943: Order of Merit, 1980.
Featuring the head of an upward looking black male, Manley’s Negro Aroused embodies the new found self-confidence of black Jamaicans. As the oldest work included in Face of Jamaica it represents the spirit of cultural nationalism during 1930s Jamaica that ultimately led to independence in 1962.
ALVIN MARRIOTT (1902-1992)
Born 1902, St. Andrew, Jamaica. As a sculptor (he was a student of Edna Manley) he has created some monuments of National Heroes and the statue of Bob Marley. British Council Scholarship provided training at Camberwell School of Art, London, UK. Exhibited locally and internationally.
WINSLEIGH MCDONALD
Female (sculpture)
Integration (sculpture)
DAVID MILLER JUNIOR (1903-1977)
Born 1903, in Kingston, Jamaica. Worked closely with his father who shared the same name but somewhat different style of woodworking. Together they started their careers by producing carvings for the Jamaica’s fledgling tourist industry but were very private about exhibiting their work locally.
David Miller’s works were favoured by the German critics. One writer, for example, said ‘Here you can feel clearly the strange, the peculiar of a different world…’ He also became one of the Flensburg museum director’s favourite painters in the show.
WHITNEY MILLER (1930-1989)
Born 1930 in St Elizabeth, Jamaica. Miller attended the Jamaica School of Art and was one of its first graduates. He was something of a loner, and this is reflected in his solitary paintings.
Pocomania
CLEVELAND MORGAN
Introduced to art through his local secondary school teacher, he was one of the first students to benefit from formal art classes at the Jamaica School of Art and Crafts after its establishment in the 1950s. Like a handful of young people from that era, he also benefited from a British Council scholarship and continued his studies at the St Martin’s School of Art. Returning to Jamaica in the 1970s he became an art teacher and continued to exhibit his work regularly. A strong draftsman, Cleveland Morgan's works are very much a product of their time. His concern for society was reflected in images of poverty, oppression and transcendence. Strongly nationalistic, his images of men and women are heroic rooted in the Jamaican experience of struggle and survival.
LEONARD MORRIS (1931 - )
Born 1931, Kingston, Jamaica. Morris took his first lessons at the Junior Centre and was one of the first students of the Jamaica School of Art and Crafts inspired by Edna Manley in the 1940s. He attended classes in the evenings studying drawing, painting, graphic design and sculpting after completing his secondary school work during the day. He completed a correspondence course with Columbia University, and attended classes at Washington Art School, Washington DC. He was also Artist-in-Residence at both The University of the West Indies and Knox College. Lives and works in St. Albans, New York.
DOROTHY PAYNE (1921 -
Born in 1921 in St. Andrew, Jamaica as the daughter of Leslie Clerk and his wife Berryl. Migrated to Toronto, Ontario, where she worked as a sculptor. Payne died a few years ago.
The Believer (sculpture)
HERBERT A. PALMER (1914 - )
Born 1914 in Falmouth, self-taught artist, started painting at the age of 13, took US correspondence courses in art; was especially successful with catering to tourists on Jamaica’s blossoming Northcoast during the 1950s.
KARL PARBOOSINGH (1923-1975)
Born 1923 St. Mary, Jamaica. Attended the Art Students’ League, New York; Centre d’Art Sacré, Paris; Atelier Fernand Leger, Paris; Instituto Politécnico, Mexico City. Alongside Barrington Watson and Eugene Hyde a co-founder of the Contemporary Jamaican Artists’ Association (1964-c. 1973). Parboosingh accompanied the second leg of the Face of Jamaica tour. Travelled and exhibited extensively.
Market scenes have been a popular subject matter in Jamaican art since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in picturesque paintings of European itinerant artists. Parboosingh’s modernist version shows a man and four women resting on a country road with baskets full of fresh produce. In the background, a distant mountain range separates a green field from the blue sky with a few scattered clouds. The overall atmosphere is tranquil, almost picturesque. The flatness of the figures in the foreground contrasts with the Post-Impressionist-like style of the landscape in the background. The combination of the market and landscape genres and the juxtaposition of two different styles is a provocative response to more traditional depictions of Jamaican themes.
DAVID POTTINGER (1911-2007)
Born 1911 in Kingston, Jamaica. Attended the Institute of Jamaica, Kingston Jamaica and the DaCosta Institute where he was taught by Edna Manley, Vera Cumming and others. Known for his scenes of life in downtown Kingston, where he lived his whole life. Exhibited extensively locally and abroad.
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