KÚYA 48 WWW.CBJAMAICA.COM
Re-shaping Jamaica’s visual arts sector not only on the island but also
as a more significant presence abroad were essential components of
Barrington’s mission in life and distinctive facets of his character. Born
January 9, 1931, the son of a prominent pharmacist who his family had
intended to become a lawyer, despite his prowess as an athlete and
student at the prestigious Kingston College high school, Barrington
went against his father’s wishes to pursue his dreams of becoming
an artist. As a youth in 1953, Barrington was among the first students
of colour ever accepted at the Royal Academy of Art in London,
and was apparently the first black student admitted to the College
of Painting. Ten years later Barrington spent time travelling through
Europe to hone his academic realist style, despite his contemporaries
predilection for abstraction. Mastery of fine painterly techniques were
a key part of his style and can be seen as on par with influencing his
fastidious efforts in injecting the Jamaican visual arts community with
a more academically rigorous structure, as well as cultivating more
professional attitude toward artists and within the artistic community.
He restructured the Jamaica School of Art to mimic the traditional
English art school, and as a founding member of the Contemporary
Jamaican Artist’s Association, he was a key part of insisting that thecodes of commercial conduct belonged firmly in the local art world.
Watson was also a key voice against the popularly lauded ‘Intuitive’
movement, as he saw the celebration of the naive on par with the
academically proven as a dangerous comparison that only served to
reinforce Western stereotypes of what Jamaican art could and should
look like. One of Barrington’s more widely circulated mantras was “I
utilise ...the light of Turner; the line of Ingres; the range of Rembrandt;
the techniques of Velasquez; the emotion of Goya; and my birthright
of Benin.”Outspoken and dedicated to his craft, afternoons on the verandah at
Orange Park were spent either drinking with his friends or mentoring
students in fine art traditions. His purchase of the 400-year old coffee
plantation in 1968 that he faithfully restored, preserving its delicate
Georgian fretwork, cut-stone facades and checkerboard courtyard to
fully recoup the classic cottage charm. For Barrington, Orange Park
started out as a means of finding an escape from the pace of Kingston;
Barrington preferred to wake early and enjoy freshly picked fruit from
the estate prepared by his wife Doreen, then days spent in his light
filled studio. Sunday afternoons were time spent with the sort ofThe works of the late artist
line the walls of Orange Park