Interviews and Updates - Blue Sky, Children's Lit and Ink

I decided to make a post of words today.

It's an intense sensation when you realise that you work has taken on its own life and that what you put into it is no longer important. The importance lies in what someone else has found or taken from it.

I was linked to TheFeelofFree where there's a tattoo of my Mythos piece. I'm most honoured. It's a really unbelievable feeling to know that someone (Zara E.) was so inspired by something I made that they have it permanently inked...I'm blown away! So to Zara, thank you and I appreciate you contacting me personally as well!

I was recently featured on two Caribbean blogs - Blue Sky Tie Dye and Summer Edward's Caribbean Children's Literature- which is awesome. Check them out. They're quite excellent.

SUMMER EDWARD'S CARIBBEAN CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

If you read my last post, you know I'm a sucker for Caribbean illustrators and have made it my business to promote the work they do. It would be remiss of me if I didn't include Brianna McCarthy in that campaign. McCarthy is a young lady from Trinidad and Tobago whose talent can only be described as dazzling. In her genius-like mastery of a single subject matter, McCarthy reminds me of the great Impressionist painter Edward Degas, who obsessively depicted dancers (ballerinas) in his art. Only with McCarthy, it's girls. McCarthy repeatedly draws and paints girls. Beautiful, colored girls. In doing so she displays her mastery in the depiction of African, East Indian and creole physical features. Truly, in her art I see the working out of a Caribbean aesthetic which recognizes and affirms négritude (black consciousness), antillanité (West Indianness), and créolité (transcultural fusing.) Her art simply radiates color consciousness and métissage.

This is the first time McCarthy work is being featured on a children's literature blog. Indeed, when I contacted her to solicit an interview I could sense a sort of pleasant surprise in her response. I see great potential for children's illustration in McCarthy work and can easily compare her skill and style in watercolor to that of award-winning African-American children's illustrators, Sharda Strikland, E.B. Lewis and even Jerry Pinkney in some respects. There is such a need for illustrations like hers--unapologetic, eloquent images of beautiful, black people-- not only in the general universe of commercial images, but in children’s illustration in general and Caribbean children's illustration in particular.

I guess you can tell that there's just not enough good things I can say about her work :-)

Read on here...

BLUE SKY TIE DYE

This beauty discovered her artistic ability at a very young age. She joked that, “I come from a resourceful family; a low income background has a tendency to provoke that!”

Read more...

Blessings and keep good!