Gleaner writer, Howard Campbell, remembers Jamaican master painter Albert Huie in this feature in today’s Sunday Gleaner.
“In late 2000, painter Albert Huie was enjoying the tranqui-lity of retirement at his home in Baltimore, Maryland, when a controversy from decades past returned to haunt him.
‘Miss Mahogany’, a 1960 nude painting that caused a furore when it was first exhibited in Kingston that year, was lifted from a feature in Air Jamaica’s Sky Writings magazine, after complaints from passengers,” … more
March 29th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
This month (March 2010) I was grief-stricken t6o learn of the death of two of my greatest acquaintances (Sexy rex and Mr. Huie).
I knew Mr. Huie more than Mr. Nettleford. As a matter of fact, I hung around at Mr. Huie’s studio on Constant Spring Road. When I graduated from The Jamaica School of Art and returned from Mexico, I really appreciated and respected him so much more. We sometimes went out on the St.Thomas Road (Rose Falls) to paint. He thought my production of paintings were too low to be a survivor in the art world. (But, understood I simply could not afford the art material.)
If there was a tutor during my “journeyman”period it was Mr. Huie.
He helped to direct me to see who I was as a painter. He had great issues with some of the people in the directive social groups who determined who should be painters and what styles the Jamaican artists should adopt and copy.
Even after, years of recognition and painting, only the loyal Jamaican supporters stood by him.
Mr. Nettleford also understood the problems of the Jamaican artists and performers and his advice was,”Walk between the raindrops. Remember what goes around comes around.”