From Saint Lucia - ALWYN ST OMER
15th to 30th Sept, 2023
Private View
19th September - 6pm to 9pm
About the Exhibition
The “Moon Dancer” series is an abstraction of the Traditional Masquerade. It is the artist’s attempt in using painting to revive interest in and to save the Traditional Masquerade as a medium in the worldwide fight against systemic racism. A ritualistic gift from the African past, the Mask was a convenient medium of escapism in our ancestors’ secret acts of rebellion.
The slaves, whenever the plantation owners permitted any form of celebration and respite from their misery, would transform themselves reverting to the Mask Traditions of the Motherland. A silent revolution and secret link to Africa from whence they were so savagely torn. These ritualistic gifts providing quiet comfort to our ancestors, a silent conquest over those who sought to be their masters.
About The Artist
Born in 1958, Alwyn St. Omer is the fourth child in a family of nine. As a child growing up in artistic environment in Saint Lucia. (Alwyn’s father is an acclaimed international artist). Alwyn was inspired by his father’s art and the plentiful supply of picture books around the house, which served to motivate him to draw and paint pictures.
At the age of six he was introduced to Comics and classical illustrations, which stimulated his appetite, for graphic design, combining it with folktales and storytelling in a pictorial format. Alwyn’s work is also influenced by the Performance Art and Plays witnesses as a Child Steeped in the island’s rich Folk and Musical Traditions.
Alwyn studied Fine Art at the Edna Manley School for the Visual Arts in Jamaica and Video Production and Audio Visuals at Portsmouth College in the United Kingdom. A master draughtsman and colourist, defining and re-defining images in a style that is uniquely his own. He has been awarded Saint Lucia Medal of Honour, Gold for Eminent Service rendered in the field of Art and Culture (2021) and a double Catapult Caribbean Art Awardee.