[dropcap]R[/dropcap]arely will an artist offer up his/her painting tools and ask a stranger to “give it a go” over their own work. It did seem completely natural, however, for Grenadian-born, Saint Lucian artist, Shay Cozier, as she picked one of many tiny, colourful pineapple paintings off of her living room wall, told me to grab a palette knife, dropped a dollop of paint into a plate and shoved it my way. The invitation came spontaneously as she answered a question on what exactly inspires her to paint.
I had seen Cozier’s work days earlier at the “Women in Art” exhibition at the National Archives. Her use of bright colours was her distinguishing trademark amongst the fourteen other exhibitors.
While we sat on a Tuesday morning on the terrace of her Bonne Terre home, a view of the Rodney Bay Marina, Pigeon Island and the ocean, worthy of anyone’s envy, beneath us, she revealed the contents of a mind infused with colour and light.
SHAY: From the time I was a little girl, when they asked, “What are you going to be when you grow up?” I always said, “Oh, an artist!” And I remember this, they said, “Oh, that’s really nice but that’s just a hobby. What are you really going to be?” and I’d say, “An artist!” So, from the time I was a little girl, I’ve always wanted to be an artist.
SHAY: Well it keeps changing, I’d have to say. I’ve come a long way, so, anything and everything. It’s always a nice challenge, and I’ll tell you what really inspires me: the challenge of doing it. You look at something, like I look at a picture, and say, “Can I do those colours?” So I think it is that, the challenge; to use those colours and to make it look real.
[She then explains her process of using only palette knives and acrylic paint on canvas, before urging me to try it myself.]
SHAY: I love my rooster! It’s wonderful! Well last year, it was actually the year of the rooster in Chinese astrology. And, it’s good luck to do a rooster. But I just love the rooster because it’s like doing carnival. You know how much fun it is to do that design? To do the feathers, it’s like a major turn on to do those things.
I put that in there but the truth is the big ones where I was showing all of Saint Lucia, that’s what I like to do. And that one, Marigot Bay [she points to a painting hanging on her dining room wall], and the boat one [she then points to another painting hanging in her living room], that’s Dennery. I should have put them in. The rooster could work because it’s Caribbean but, honestly, I would put in those instead. So, the theme was, that it’s all scenes of Saint Lucia.
[We then spoke briefly, about the painting of Marigot Bay, which Cozier explained was inspired by a photograph of an au naturelle Marigot Bay under a beautiful pink sky.]
SHAY: Have you been there lately? Well, we didn’t go too long ago, and we’d taken some friends just to stop there and look down, pretty much like the painting. I was thinking we were going to look from the
lookout point but you can’t even get out there; they’ve made such a big scene and you have to pay and blah blah so we said, “You know what? Forget it.” The idea is to catch those pictures so you can paint them a thousand times because soon it will be gone.
SHAY: Actually we were looking at old photographs and we found this picture of one of my paintings. It was a painting that was chosen to go into the Jamaica National Art Gallery a long time ago. And I thought, “Oh wow!” The whole National Art Gallery really sticks out in my head, it really had wonderful things.
I went to this one [Women in Art exhibition], Margot [National Archivist] tries to do her best with one room. It makes me think, “Wow! We don’t even have a Saint Lucian National Art Gallery. I would love to be able to start the National Art Gallery but I don’t know what exactly you have to go through. I’m saying, we have all these individual galleries and I’m thinking, where’s the National Art Gallery?
Shay Cozier’s paintings have been featured in various art galleries throughout the region. Currently her work can be viewed at the “Women in Art” exhibition which runs until February 23 at the National Archives on Clarke Avenue in Vigie, Castries.
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