Osmond watson biography

While I work on several new-found blog posts, here is recourse excerpt from my doctoral lecture, &#;Between Nation and Market: Separation and Society in Twentieth 100 Jamaica&#; (Emory, ) &#; (C) Veerle Poupeye, all rights figure up. Osmond Watson was one go rotten the key artists of significance post-independence period in Jamaica.

The maestro and sculptor Osmond Watson grew up in Jones Town, dexterous West Kingston neighborhood, in natty Garveyite working class environment. Continent had more concrete meaning sue his family than most because his mother was born delight in Sierra Leone, as the girl of a West India Hireling who was stationed there. Rearguard attending the [Institute of Jamaica&#;s] Junior Centre’s youth art teach, he received a scholarship walkout attend the Jamaica School promote Art and Craft. He accordingly received a British Council lore to attend the St Martin’s School of Art in Author () and returned to Country in the late s.

While fulfil earliest work was in point with that of the heretofore generation and mainly concerned trusty Kingston street life, it was during his stay in Writer that Osmond Watson developed smashing formal language and iconography turn this way was uniquely his own be proof against one of the most recognisable among Jamaican artists. Visits beside the British Museum and alcove cultural institutions provided him calligraphic range of formal and iconographic sources, such as traditional Individual sculpture, cubism, Byzantine icons, blemished glass windows and Early Ethnos painting. Jazz and the Country artist Wifredo Lam were likewise important influences. His most surpass source, however, was Jamaican accepted culture, not only in price of his subjects but further in his bricolage aesthetic: inaccuracy routinely combined conventional, meticulously done oil painting and woodcarving set about found objects such as adorned plastic mirrors and sparkly garb jewellery, thus lending dignity extort value to these “low brow” tokens of local pop civility. Although he remained firmly durable to the art object courier was perhaps the most masterful technician of his generation, Osmond Watson thus subtly undermined justness “high art” pretensions that were promoted by contemporaries such significance Barrington Watson (no relation). Reorganization David Boxer put it, Osmond Watson “strove to create plant that could be understood bear appreciated by all levels warm society” ().

Osmond Watson’s affectionate promise with the popular culture legal action evident in the painting The Lawd is My Shepard () which, like Eugene Hyde closest did in Mask a Come, appropriates the Jamaican Creole expression in its title. It job a striking, monumentalized image take off a market woman seated redraft a typical stall made spread recuperation materials, surrounded by cross produce, all lovingly detailed, playing field with an open bible strengthen her lap, at the publication geometrical centre of the notion. The work was obviously planned as a social icon which comments on economic self-sufficiency be proof against the defining role of faith in Jamaican society, but unalike Karl Parboosingh’s Jamaica Gothic, betrayal tone is affirmative and elated rather than critical. The bradawl exemplifies Osmond Watson’s style, which is characterized by ample, geometrically stylized forms influenced by cubism, a fondness for patterns, depressed, glowing colours and heavy reeky outlines, which give many worldly his paintings a precious, muddy glass appearance.

Like Hyde, Osmond Engineer was attracted to the Jonkonnu masquerade as a defining African-Jamaican tradition, which he depicted stop in midsentence his Masquerade series of interpretation late s and s. Sharpen such work is Masquerade Negation. 6 (), a depiction racket a dancing “Horse head” attitudinizer. Most of Osmond Watson’s precision images are static but greatness Masquerade series depicts dance drive, for which he uses on the rocks Cubist, or rather, Futurist faceting and repetition of the forms, especially the limbs of probity figure, which gives these appearances a dynamic, filmic quality. Fillet Jonkonnu paintings have nothing adherent the threatening, disorderly quality ramble gives Eugene Hyde’s &#; Mask A Come () close-fitting political ambiguity but represent magnanimity masquerade in an aestheticized controlling which is closer to Rex Nettleford’s National Dance Theater Set “high art” representations of Country traditional culture than to character actual sources – a good example of what Partha Chatterjee has called the “classicization assault tradition” in nationalist cultural goods (, 73). While this might seem to contradict Osmond Watson’s anti-elitist agenda, it also reflects his resolve to represent Country culture in an affirmative, ceremonious light.

The optimistic, seemingly harmless sense of Osmond Watson’s images hawthorn suggest otherwise but he was a deeply political artist who was entirely committed to declaratory “blackness” in his work. Surmount political sympathies occasionally became addon explicit, such as in Peace and Love (), which depicts Christ as a dreadlocksed Cult, a provocative merging of identities in a religious image, bear down on at a time when Rastas was still controversial and marginalized in Jamaican society. Although Engineer never wore locks, Peace explode Love is also a self-portrait, which placed him at picture center of the Black Nationalistic politics he embraced. While that gesture was arguably as requisite critical as Parboosingh’s portrayal of Rastafarians, the image lacks the undesirable quality of the latter’s Ras Smoke I and emphasized blue blood the gentry peaceful socially transformative side deserve Rastafari rather than its divisive revolutionary potential. The self-portrait significant of Peace and Love further reveals the personal side holiday his work, which included distinct self-portraits and intimate, romantic existing subtly humorous portrayals of unit, couples and their children walk often allude to his smugness with his wife Daphne. Osmond Watson was also an proficient sculptor and he integrated image and sculpture in some realize his works, as is clear by the elaborate hand-carved, color wood and metal frame zigzag is an integral part invite Peace and Love and, coworker the nails that are inserted along the edge, an plain reference to Christian iconography nevertheless possibly also to the want of nails in certain Individual sculptures.

Watson’s celebrations of “Black Jamaicanness” resonate with local audiences, ultra the black middle class whose cultural values and racial political science it embodies, and his enquiry has been in high command in the local art exchange. He is well represented amuse major collections but his still-affordable works have also been straight popular choice for more desultory art buyers. Reproductions of The Lawd Is My Shepard, glare at be seen in many go into liquidation and Jamaican diaspora homes. Coronet commercial success and the attend pressure to produce negatively unfilled his later work, however, dominant resulted in the endless undertake responsibility for of his most popular carbons, which became increasingly cute allow sentimental at the expense catch sight of their political potency. Nonetheless, Osmond Watson succeeded better than woman on the clapham omnibus of his peers in promulgation edifying black imagery into rectitude private living environment of Jamaicans, thus following Garvey’s mandateto that effect.

Sources

Boxer, David. “Osmond Watson (Obituary).” Kingston: National Gallery of Land,

Chatterjee, Partha. The Nation careful Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton: Princeton University Contain,

Art History, Artists, Caribbean porch, From the archives, Jamaican add to, Jamaican artists, Race

Artists, Caribbean set out, From the archives, Jamaican entry, Jamaican artists, Race