Jackie
Hinkson is the quintessential Caribbean Artist. A national of Trinidad &
Tobago, he has for decades been a painter and interpreter of the
landscape, seascape, architecture and people of his country and of the
regions' islands, in watercolours, oils, acrylics, ink, pencil and crayon
and in his sculpture and murals.
Hinkson is no closer to adequately explaining his art now than he was
decades ago. He sees art as a complex process and believes a work can
simultaneously have several layers of interrelated meanings. This makes it
difficult to verbally interpret art and very easy to misinform. One of
these layers of meanings is communicated through imagery, which can be
literal or/and symbolic. In Plein-air painting, once he has decided on his
subject matter and this he does instinctively, his total focus shifts to
technical considerations. He edits, distorts and simplifies.
He
searches for the correct weight of tone, for the correct juxtaposition of
shape, for the right light. And it is this intuitive search for a
particular light and mood that has characterized his career as a painter.
For him a wall, a roof, a shadow, a doorway, a cloud, a strip of sea all
have the potential to function as light, tone and abstract shape while
simultaneously evoking symbolic meaning.
In his studio painting, murals and sculpture, his intuitive approach also
dominates. He thinks there is an increasing tendency, certainly locally,
to pay too much attention to the intellectual aspect of a work especially
when it is inspired by a didactic, moral or political position. This
tendency continues to encourage artists to over explain their art to an
understandably insecure public. For him, in the end, meaning in the work
must come through as something mostly felt rather than analyzed.
Jackie
Hinkson is the quintessential Caribbean Artist. A national of Trinidad &
Tobago, he has for decades been a painter and interpreter of the
landscape, seascape, architecture and people of his country and of the
regions' islands, in watercolours, oils, acrylics, ink, pencil and crayon
and in his sculpture and murals. 
He
searches for the correct weight of tone, for the correct juxtaposition of
shape, for the right light. And it is this intuitive search for a
particular light and mood that has characterized his career as a painter.
For him a wall, a roof, a shadow, a doorway, a cloud, a strip of sea all
have the potential to function as light, tone and abstract shape while
simultaneously evoking symbolic meaning.