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The Undaunted Spirit

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OPENING RECEPTION

Monday 10th October

6:00 - 7:30 pm

EXHIBIT CONTINUES UNTIL:
Saturday 22nd October

Gallery hours: 

Monday - Friday . 9am - 5pm

Saturday - 9am - 2pm



PREVIEWS:
For further information on the artist, or to schedule a private viewing please contact 628-4165



Shastri Maharaj presents a picture of unflinching energy through various visual devices. Pairings of complementary colours – blue and orange, red and green – deliver an intensity that is not so easily stifled. His trees stand like matchsticks with flaming heads to light a possible way. In some paintings, focus on a lone plant offers a look at temerity, while in others, trees huddled together serve as a reminder ofthe strength in numbers – the potency of relations; the power in collectivity. Where his renderings of the sky are ostensibly grim, a closer inspection reveals brilliant hues peeping out in defiance.

To suggest that hope might reside in these “pretty pictures”1 is to court sentimentality. In their book Art as Therapy, Alain de Botton and John Armstrong acknowledge this argument about hope. They write: “The pretty picture seems to suggest that in order to make life nice, one merely has to brighten up the apartment with a depiction of some flowers. If we were to ask the picture what is wrong with the world, it might be taken as saying ‘you don’t have enough Japanese water gardens’ —a response that appears to ignore all the more urgent problems that
confront humanity” (p.14). Maharaj’s “pretty” paintings of fields, houses, cattle and people will not save the world but they may help us cope. His images do not suggest that all is well but – to use de Botton and Armstrong’s advice – we might look to them for encouragement. De Botton and Armstrong recognise the capacity of art to stimulate the psychological effect of optimism. It is a hope that can dampen a great tendency toward “excessive gloom.”

[1] It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder but a certain visuality, or way of seeing in Trinidad and Tobago, dictates a prevailing taste for the landscape image (terrain, foliage) as pretty or acceptable.


- Marsha Pearce

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