Lovely exhibition by Beckett

What is striking is how very local and colourful the paintings are, coming from a British-born woman, but one who has spent most of her adult life in this country.

Also, the background music, songs of early Sparrow (Slinger Francisco) and Kitchener (Aldwyn Roberts) lend support to the paintings.

Among paintings on display are “God’s Syntax”, “Variation in Pink”, “The Dreamer”, “Orpheus (The Guitarist)”, “Down by the River”, “From Lethe’s Depths”, “Sa Sa Yea”, “The Green Psalms of Earth”, “Tortuga Tango II”, “Persephone”, “Tortuga Tango I”, “Saga Girls” and “Glory Glory”.

The painting are also accompanied by poems, also done by Beckett such as “Like Cavafy”, “From Cloud Country”, “Sa Sa Yea”, “Better than a Letter”, “Vespers, “For a While”, “L’heure Bleu”, “I Never Knew You”, “Ode to Two Cows in Tobago”, “Against Thanatos”, “Going Blanchisseuse”, “Fragments of Delight (After the Rain, Making Music, After Swimming at Dawn)” and “How to be an Artist - reminder to myself.” Beckett was influenced by local artists Pat Chu Foon and also James Boodhoo who she described as a wonderful artist; as well as Sonnylal Ramkissoon who did etching; another great artist but terribly unrecognised she said, describing him as a fantastic draughtsman and very generous.

“I was just 20-years-old when I came to Trinidad (from England) and these were already fine established painters and they really took me under their wing and taught me a lot. It was wonderful,” said Beckett.

Of the exhibition she said: “This exhibition grew out of work that I’ve done before because one exhibition doesn’t suddenly appear by itself.

I have been painting for over 50 years. And there are elements in that show that actually reflect back to previous exhibitions which I treated in a certain kind of way then and have reworked them.” She explained: “A lot of what happens is that you do the thinking and you do the hard work and preparations etc and when you actually start working, every painting seems to have an idea of what it is going to be inside itself, which sounds peculiar and that is where the struggle is. That you block out something and you have to change things around and think. And this is why working in oils is very demanding.” Beckett said an artist also has to learn patience to let the paint dry so that they could do the next layer of painting etc she said: “You can’t just knock it off in a day. It takes weeks, and weeks, and weeks and a lot of it is thinking.

“We need the time from ourselves to be able to see the work, possibly with more objectivity.

And, working on that scale is like you are inside the painting so you really need to be able to stand away.” It took Beckett seven weeks to get the exhibition paintings done but said she had been thinking about drawing, and was in preparation for the show for over a year. She said painting is just a product for what has gone before.

Asked how she felt about the exhibition she said: “I think it works but the proof of the pudding is if the people who come, and they get it, and they come away and say: ‘oh wow! That really lightened me up or that really cheer up my spirit’ that will make my heart glow.” Beckett has done a number of one-woman exhibitions in the past dating back to 1970.

The exhibition