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they’ll give you the specific street. The painter
Sheena Rose is one of these outliers. With her
statement glasses and ever-changing hair, Rose
looks like someone you’d see on the streets of
Brooklyn. “I consider myself a Bajan Frida
Kahlo,” she told me when we met shortly after
I landed for a lunch overlooking the sea at the
Crane Hotel.
Barbados does not have an art school. Nor
is there much of an art scene (most of the
galleries cater to tourists who want paintings of
sunsets) beyond Rose and her crew of creative
friends. And yet Rose is a rising star in the
contemporary art world, whose work has
appeared at the Venice Biennale and London’s
Royal Academy of Arts. Venus Williams collects
her. Rose earned an MFA from the University
of North Carolina in Greensboro, which she
attended on a Fulbright scholarship. “I feel like
an outsider now, after Greensboro,” she said,
as we drove to her tiny studio. “I don’t feel like
a full Bajan anymore.” Rose still lives with her
parents in a middle-class neighbourhood of
pastel homes faded by the salty air, not far from
Bridgetown, the capital city. When we walked
in the door, The Andy Griffith Show played on
the large TV in the living room, and Rose
crouched down to pet one of her three dogs.
(Their names are Popcorn, Caramel,
and Candy.)
She then took me into her studio—once her
brother’s bedroom—to see Sweet Gossip, her latest
series of paintings. Local black women were
drawn in outlines, their faces marked by dabs
of colour to show how the light hit their skin.
And what colours they were: dusky roses, slate
blues, dark caramels, olive greens. Some of the
women were talking on the phone, others lounged
in classic poses like odalisques. The backgrounds
and clothing, with their bright geometric patterns,
recalled West African batiks or Moroccan tiles.
After oohing and ahhing over the paintings
so much that Rose’s mom, Elaine, a caterer,
started laughing at me, I told Rose on the spot
I needed to buy one.
Later, a question occurred to me. “Is it
Barbadian or Bajan? Is one preferred by
the locals?”
“Not really,” Elaine replied.airport. Her likeness was just behind the
customs booth, hanging in a place typically
reserved for government leaders.
I had expected to see Barbados’s most
famous daughter many, many times over
the course of my weeklong stay. But I quickly
discovered that the locals aren’t especially
caught up in Rihanna’s allure. They’d rather
focus on people and places that the rest of the
world hasn’t already discovered.
Barbados has always been a bit of an outlier
in the Caribbean. Geographically, this former
British colony is the region’s easternmost
country, a pear-shaped island jutting far out
into the southern Atlantic. (It is so far east,
in fact, that it is usually spared by hurricanes.)
And though the Caribbean-facing western coast
has long been popular with well-heeled Brits
who fly in for the polo, the five-star resorts,
and the pristine beaches, the windswept,
Atlantic-facing eastern coast is still wild and
unpolished. It draws a bohemian, international
crowd of hippies and outdoorsy types, who
come not only for the laid-back pace but also
for the spectacular surf—something that few
Caribbean islands can claim. The breaks in
Barbados may not be on the same level as the
Gold Coast of Australia, but the country is slowly
gaining international cred, as evidenced by last
spring’s Barbados Surf Pro, the first-ever
professional tournament held there. I came
to this underrated surfing paradise to spend
time with my dad, Paul, a wave enthusiast who
had always tried to lure me, a reluctant sun
worshipper, to the beach.CULTURALLY, BARBADOS PRODUCES proud
outliers: people who want to build a life on the
island, yet also want their work to be recognized
beyond a country so small that when you ask
people which neighbourhood they’re from,THE FIRST AND
LAST TIME I SAW
RIHANNA—IN A
SWIMSUIT, NO
LESS—WAS AT THE
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