Brent Malone was an exceptional artist who was a native of Nassau and the first Bahamian to attend art school. Malone was alive from 1941 until 2004, and during that time, he impacted many through his blazed trail in the art world. Throughout his career, Brent Malone had many different mediums and styles; he experimented, failed, and succeeded. The artist was known not only as Brent Malone but also as “The Father of Bahamian Art.” He was the first one to take a leap of faith into the unknown, and many artists followed after him. Being the first professional artist in the Bahamas, the responsibility of defining Bahamian art was up to him. Two styles Brent Malone is known for in surrealism and photorealism. Surrealism basically being defined as taking what is real and putting it in a dream-like state, so painting an object or person in real life but with a twist of imagination. Malone’s other style was photorealism, which is described as taking a photo of a scene or object and making it as accurate as possible on paper or canvas.
The image above shows an example of Malone's photorealism style that he used often. Brent Malone would have learned some of these techniques from the art school he attended in England, the Beckenham School of Art in London. After graduation, Malone came back to the Bahamas and reopened Chelsea Pottery and sold traditional Bahamian Pottery; it closed the year after. He went on to open many more galleries and art stores to help aspiring artists display their work and make a profit from it. Malone became an important member in the “BECAUSE” foundation which stands for “Bahamas Creative Artists United for Serious Expression” which may sound familiar since it has been mentioned in class.
As mentioned before Brent Malone had to pave the way when it came to what Bahamaian art is. He decided to dive into the collection of the islands’ history a bit and made many pieces focusing on Junkanoo which is a holiday where in the past enslaved people of the islands would paint their faces with flour paste the day after Christmas which is Boxing Day and now in present day everyone comes together for a parade as well as singing and dancing. In the Junkanoo pieces he usually includes chains around the wrists of his main subject and cowbells on either side of the chain, this is because the chain symbolizes the containment of enslaved people and the cowbells being apart of the now celebration of freedom out of slavery. Another focus in Malone’s work is the wildlife of the Bahamas.
Personally I can absolutely understand why Brent Malone chose Junkanoo and wildlife as a centerpoint for most of his art. Junkanoo in itself has a ton of art, from the costume creation and design, to the floats for parades and welding of cowbells and instruments. Wildlife is one of my inspirations as well, so I can relate to his love of capturing the beauty of the natural world. In one of his pieces, “Flamingo on Earth” it features palm trees as a background to the main flamingo in the foreground. He also has a painting of an abstract sunflower or something like it, unfortunately I could not find the official name for this one piece, another is a still-life painting of a bouquet of flowers in the same abstract-like style.
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