Mr. Hunt’s relatively small painting splits the image vertically into two portions. On the left is an abstract depiction of Junkanoo idiom – geometric shapes with sharp angles, some color, predominantly yellow – for the costume. A glaring eye, intoxicated with the spirit and the joy of Junkanoo atop a bulging cheek, dominates the headpiece or more specifically the mask. And here the color is a bluish green.
The mask however is incomplete. Mr. Hunt as no one before, has taken a scalpel to that mask, cutting it cleanly, straight down the middle to reveal what’s aback of the joy and celebration.
Mr. Hunt’s stylized Giacommetti-like elongated neck and heavily hooded eye – closed in this, as in many of the 36 pieces – poignantly captures Junkanoo’s paradox; the pain the sorrow, the bitter beneath the mask. The cocoa hued skin and the single grey stream of a tear coursing from the eye’s corner to just above the closed mouth shows the bitter sadnesses, disappointments and sorrows that for two days each year we hide beneath music, dance, costumes and masks – the catharsis.
Those who take the time to visit this exhibition will also see the evolution of Mr. Hunt’s discovery – the palette knife. As with all new discoveries, there are moments when exuberance overwhelms – Reflective Son, I Dreamt of Sunflowers, Just Between Us and the Mother Series, six contemplations of Bahamian Motherhood.
Island Baptism is the most harmonious expression of Mr. Hunt’s new discovery, black outlined two-dimensional figures appear to float on a brilliant orangey red silky smooth background and all of which float above a stylized sea. Mr. Hunt’s brush and palette knife in Island Baptism create pleasing blends of textures, forms and an eye-catching combination of colors.
The human form, as interpreted by Mr. Hunt, dominates this exhibition. The figure combines the aforementioned Giacommetti-like elongated neck and small head while the rest of the figure, particularly the hips and thighs are pure gussimae.
Few artists have been able to evoke as broad a range of emotions from closed or heavily hooded eyes as Mr. Hunt, which is why Family Covering is startling. Nothing, not even Bahamian Time, a painting in which you can feel the woman’s eyes laughing at you from behind closed lids, prepares you for the implacable defiance that dares you to uncover the family’s protection.
The three pairs of eyes belong to three women committed to the single task of protecting a family member, a woman, from all and sundry. The protected woman, kneeling on all fours in a womb-like space, knows that the weight of those three pairs of hands is her assurance that she is covered. And for interlopers, of whatever stripe, the implacable barrier of three pairs of eyes hold out nothing but frustration and defeat of every query bent on uncovering the family.
Take a portion
of your lunch break, walk across to the Central Bank and treat yourself
to a half hour of visual stimulation. Your soul will bless you, and
your stomach will thank you. Talking Canvases runs through April 28
at the Central Bank Art Gallery,
ART’S paradox isn’t that a work is original or novel, but that having being said before it is nevertheless unique.
Talking Canvases, the title given by Marlon Hunt to his 38-piece exhibition at the Central Bank, is a case in point. What is unique about the exhibition is the insight he brings to his reflections. In “Artist Thoughts”, the brochure given out at the opening on April 8, Mr. Hunt states: “I always ask myself the question: ‘what is going through the mind of an individual at a specific moment in time?’
Except for My Cup of Tea and Bahamian Banana Blues, the remaining pieces are an exploration of the journey through individual minds. Talking Canvases is a welcome, reinterpretation of the dominant force in Bahamian art - Junkanoo. In the single explicitly Junkanoo painting, at least in name, Mr. Hunt presents a unique image of Junkanoo. Whether representational or impressionistic, Bahamian artists have generally been reverential in their approach and faithful in their depiction.
