Sharing at the Table (1999), by Seya Parboosingh. Image courtesy the National Gallery of Jamaica

Seya Parboosingh, American-born artist living in Jamaica since 1958, died on Friday 13 August in Kingston.

The National Gallery of Jamaica blog published a short obituary:

The painter and poet Seya Parboosingh, née Samila Joseph, was born in 1925, in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She was of Lebanese descent. She attended the University of Iowa, where she concentrated on creative writing. Seya met and married Jamaican artist Karl Parboosingh in New York in 1957 and began to paint under his direction. The couple settled in Jamaica in 1958 and that year they had their first joint exhibition at the Kingston and St. Andrew Parish Library. Seya spent most of her active life in Jamaica and was a well-recognised member of the Jamaican artistic community . . .

The close artistic partnership between Seya and Karl Parboosingh continued until the time of his death in 1975 and arguably endured beyond that time. Some of her most poignant works were visual expressions of her grief at his passing.

The critic Petrine Archer wrote a profile of Parboosingh for Caribbean Beat in 2000. You can download a PDF of the piece here. Archer wrote:

Seya’s painting has always tended towards minimalism. Her surfaces are characterised by a handful of motifs and images that she uses again and again. Typical are her silent female figures and seemingly isolated objects drawn from nature. Flowers, fruits, birds, fish and angelic figures are painted so that they relate to each other, but still remain separate. Even when they touch they rarely interact; each object seems self-sufficient with a sense of wholeness. But partnered with one another, her subjects tell a story of cosmic unity and love among all things.

Di Real Big Man (2010), by Ebony G. Patterson. Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Jamaica

One welcome recent development in the Jamaican art scene has been the launch of the National Gallery of Jamaica blog, which finally gives the NGJ a meaningful online presence. (For this we can thank Veerle Poupeye, who was appointed executive director of the gallery last year.) The NGC’s current show, Young Talent V, brings together fourteen emerging artists under forty and based in Jamaica for a survey of current and future directions in contemporary Jamaican art. (Young Talent is a series of periodic exhibitions, with previous surveys organised by the NGJ in 1985, 1989, 1995, and 2002.) It opened on 18 May, runs till 10 July, and has been amply documented at the NGJ blog.

Ahead of the opening, the NGJ has posted profiles of each Young Talent artist — with biographical information, images, and notes from the curators:

• Marvin Bartley
• Keisha Castello
• Stefan Clarke
• Michael Elliott
• Christopher Harris
• Marlon James (not to be confused with the novelist of the same name)
• Leasho Johnson
• Megan McKain
• Oliver Myrie
• Ebony G. Patterson
• Oneika Russell
• Sand
• Caroline “bops” Sardine
• Phillip Thomas

Carousel (2009), by Phillip Thomas. Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Jamaica

The July issue of the CRB will include a review of Young Talent. Meanwhile, here’s what artist and critic Petrine Archer — who participated in the first Young Talent show in 1985 — has to say:

This time around, Young Talent V offers stunning, sophisticated and superlative work that addresses contemporary issues related to history and identity, gender and sexuality, violence and social issues in ways that harness contemporary vernaculars. Its artists and curators deserve high praise for mounting a show that after a hiatus as a result of internal squabbling, commercialism and funding difficulties seems set to put Jamaican art back on the international art map.

Territorial Fad (2010; left panel of triptych), by Leasho Johnson.
Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Jamaica