The Art of Versatility

The School of Art and Design Saint Lucia hosted its second annual Sidewalk Chalk Art Festival this year and it was there I met some enthusiastic young artists putting their own spin on an unusual medium, neither canvas nor sketchpad paper. Instead they showed off their talents on the sidewalk at Baywalk Mall. At the event were lots of very creative designs, and the one which seemed to catch everyone’s attention was a piece by Brad Lacan. I too was intrigued by the piece and was curious to know more about this young artist.

Darnell Brad Lacan, referred to by most as Brad, is a twenty year old resident of Fond Le Grande in Castries and past student of St. Mary’s College. Brad told me about his piece, which nearly everyone, young and old, mistook for a member of the famous “Transformers” family.

“The piece is called a Wing Gundam. The Wing Gundam is taken from “Gundam Wing,” the animated series. This series played when I was younger, in the early 2000s, so I understand why most people do not recog-nize it and mistake it for a Transformer.”

The piece took Brad four and a half hours to complete, although he confesses that he has no patience.

“The piece took some time but I’m happy with how it came out. I’ve never really drew on a sidewalk before but that wasn’t too much of challenge. The amount of detail in the piece caused it to be time consuming,” he explained.

Brad isn’t certain at what age he started drawing, but one thing is certain; the guy has talent.

“I started drawing as a little boy, probably when I was about 4 or 5 years old. Growing up, I watched a lot of Dragonball Z like most children, and I started with that cartoon, drawing the characters. It was mainly Dragonball Z until I got to Form One when I started doing Visual Art in School and started doing more interesting stuff.”

Brad did Visual Art as one of his CXC subjects and obtained a distinction. He is currently attending the Saint Lucia School of Art and Design part time, where he is enrolled in the 2D Animation course.

“I love to do pencil drawing, especially animation. I’ve done a little bit of painting, I’ve also done a few murals but I prefer drawing. Right now I’m into drawing on canvas with charcoal. I enjoy sketching still-life and realistic black and white drawings”

“The 2D Animation course that I do entails computer animation courses and drawing courses; live drawing, basic and intermediate drawing. And it is at the School (of Art and Design) that I got introduced to charcoal drawing.”

Brad explains that he’d love to learn to do proper portraits, as that is not one of his strengths at the moment.

“At the School of Art and Design I have been taught to draw people but not necessarily portraits. I’m not sure as yet, we may be taught to do it in the later courses but I would love to learn to draw human beings well.”

Brad is currently employed on contract at the Ministry of Agriculture, where he is being trained in veterinary medicine and science.

“I’m contemplating going back to school to study veterinary science because I also love animals. I want to be an artist but I want to have another job also, something that I can call work.”

I asked Brad if he had already decided what type of artist he would want to be and what would he like to undertake as an artist in the future.

“I would love to do a bit of everything. Whether it be to create my own animations for a new TV series, doing graphic designs and signs or businesses or maybe even tattoos or people. I don’t want to settle for any particular one. I want to test myself and see how far I can go with my art.”