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Born : St. Kitts, West Indies
Living on St. Maarten since 1974
Education :
Art Review by Fabian Badejo :
Great Bay, St. Maarten - Santa came just in time this year for all art lovers in the form of Cynric Griffith. You enter the cozy Nanette Bearden Fine ArtS Gallery in the Royal Palm arcade on Frontstreet, and two personalities grab your immediate attention: one, an almost diminutive, asthenic-type, sharp-featured man, with a compelling look, and the other a bearded philosopher-type, rasta rebel, earthy guru of a man, imposing more than in life, with a silent booming voice that lifts him out of the oil canvas.
The first is the creator of the second, but both have a common bond of dignified simplicity and an aura of wisdom that only life's vicissitudes can teach. Griffith the man, humble, hardworking, hopeful, and Griffith the artist, probing, seeking, shouting almost inaudibly in water-colours of craggy rocks, or in an oil-painting of a shamefully balding hillside on the way to Pointe Blanche, or sometimes whispering in the stillness of the afternoon as captured in an idyllic landscape of Great Bay (Panorama of Philipsburg)... the two Griffith's, (for there are indeed only these two), metamorphose into one, and we realize - those of us who have been following his artistic trajectory in over a decade - that there has always been but one Griffith: Griffith the master portrait artist.
There has been no other contemporary artist on the island who can capture the soul of a person on canvas like Griffith. The St. Kitts-born artist has not changed: has has only matured. His water-colour of the Old Shack in French Quarter is a poetic homage to a fast disappearing epoch. The “shack”, sagging and almost crumbling under an invisible and invincible weight, evokes the rhythm and movement of a limbo dance. But it is in the portraits that Griffith shows his true stature as an artist. “Portrait of a Man” captures the inner self of an extraordinary common man, part of the alluring mindscape of Marigot. The painting has an imposing presence that is felt even at a distance, and stamps the entire exhibition with the authority of a sage. This is Griffith at his magical best. The light falling with such vigor on the man’s forehead, at such an angle that the unseen rays form a hot plate of transcendental fire, as if to say here was an anointed spirit, the lone vein sticking out of his head like a tap root of knowledge, and the dread-lock tied to the back of his head as if to anchor him to life, not to talk of his rabbi-type bearD... Griffith not only sought to wring out the soul of his unique model, but obviously poured his own heart and soul into the painting.
Artists, true artists, never change their idiom, no matter how large their vocabulary grows. Griffith has stuck to his artistic idiom like a faithful seeker of Truth. The market scenes in both water colour and pastel are peopled by the same vintage Griffith favorites: ordinary, big bottomed women, children, all going about their daily business; the conchshell, ubiquitous like Roland Richardson’s flamboyant is flaming present, and the rainbow colours of the head-tie of a thick-lipped woman - these are all the same artistic constants which have become iconoclastic with Griffith.
The radiograph pen-ink pieces are much less compelling. This is even more evident as the artist has a couple of pieces he repeated in this medium as well as in water-colour. The contrast reflects rather poorly on the ink work which does not seem to consolidate its presence in this exhibition.
All in all, Griffith’s first one-man show in three long years is precious Christmas gift that makes one almost obliged to scream” “Give us more portraits, Grif!”
St. Maarten / Saint Martin Artists deserve your attention, even if it is just for a few minutes which will enrich your leasure vacation manyfold.
Cynic Griffith is renowed for his life like original oil paintings that excel in accuracy and enormous detail.
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