Or more to the point, a faint heart would never have found models for my
series Daughters of the Caribbean Sun.
My search is not for professional models but real people
between the age of eighteen and eighty.
I have found them carrying bananas down the steep hillsides of St
Vincent, bathing in the rivers, selling mangoes by the roadside or passing me
in the street. I met Denise, my wife and
model for twenty-three years, in the queue at Barclay’s Bank. All I ask of my models – after I have plucked
up courage to approach them - is that they do not disguise their natural
appearance in preference to a foreign concept of beauty.
How much easier it was in Paris in the 1880’s. In those days there was a weekly model market
and statistics reveal that a total of 671 models were professionally employed. At least in Dominica I have the field to
myself.
My search continues and I ask my regular readers on Dominica
to pass the word.
Today’s painting is my most recent of Naomi. She is an inspired model who came to my
studio and into modelling, quite by chance.
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