IMPORT: Alison Chapman Andrews - The artist whose award-winning work has been inspired by the West Indian landscape
Born in: Hertford, England; Age: 67; Occupation: Artist, retired art teacher
Glittering prizes:
• 1985 & 1986:  Purchase Awards: Art Collection Foundation (Barbados)
• 1996: Part of the Gold Medal-winning Barbadian submission, Santo Domingo
• 2006: Lifetime Achievement Award, Committee of the Collector’s Club
• 2007: Governor General’s Award, Crop Over Visual Arts

The journey to the Caribbean: Born in Hertford, England, in 1942, Alison went on to study art in London, first in Walthamstow and then at the Royal College of Art Painting School in South Kensington. She was awarded the A.R.C.A. in Painting in 1963. She began her teaching career in 1967 as a lecturer in drawing at the College of Art and Industrial Design, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, before moving onto the Holloway Boys School, London, in 1968. Alison came to Barbados in 1971, just short of her 30th birthday, when her first husband got a job at the Ministry of Works. She began to teach art at the St Michael School. However, she was forced to retire early in 1988 with the onset of multiple sclerosis. She became a citizen of the island in 1980 and in 1985 married Stanley Greaves, a Guyanese painter.

The road to success: The pursuit of success is not necessarily at the forefront of Alison’s mind when she is creating a piece of art. Her art has developed through many phases and she has always taken it seriously, but never as a means to make money.  “I have never sought any success. Not in that way. Being a full-time teacher, I never had to make a living from my art, so I avoided tourist market pressures, and enjoyed the luxury of making art for myself alone.”

The world on Alison Chapman-Andrews: Alison’s work and methods are often described as unique. Nel Bretney, chairman of the Lifetime Achievement Award Committee, noted: “Since the early ‘70s Alison has been making her mark on the Barbadian art scene. As artist, teacher, gallery curator, and newspaper columnist, she has gained the admiration of artists and viewing public alike.  Whether as an abstract or a representational painter, Alison Chapman-Andrews makes interpretive leaps that single her out as a unique artist.” Art critic Allison Thompson wrote: “Typically pointed and often witty, Alison Chapman-Andrews combined two qualities which make a good art critic – she was well informed and opinionated.”

Alison on life: A search for simplification has influenced Alison and her work recently. “The focus of my painting and my life has narrowed and simplified lately. Current works are often single trees, a Christmas palm in my garden. This tree is sometimes seen in close-up, drawn from observation, and records changes in light or growth, or it may be presented in a series in an imaginary place. My palette, too, has simplified: primary colours are mixed and muted, or are as bright as possible.”

The Caribbean connection: Alison discovered her “art vocabulary” in the West Indian landscape. “When I arrived in Barbados 40 years ago, I painted the landscape and saw reminders of England in cultivated cane fields and plantation houses beneath avenues of royal palms. This interest changed to exploring the gullies. Gullies were formed by collapses of caves in a limestone landscape. I showed the moon with its energy animating masculine trunks. The moon positions in the composition became like the final square in a board game.”

The artist, who has also painted in Guyana, adds: “My surroundings became my inspiration and my subject, and as my subject was so familiar to everyone and not ‘difficult’ I was free to pursue my own interpretations and impose my ideas. I still believe the next painting will succeed. This continual search for a successful outcome is what it seems to be about. All one can do is keep making them. Fortunately, one painting usually leads on to the next.”

EXPORT: Floella Benjamin - The TV star from Trinidad who entertained and inspired a whole generation of British children
Born in: Pointe-a-Pierre, Trinidad and Tobago; Resident of: UK; Age: 60; Occupation: Children’s TV presenter and campaigner, Broadcaster, Producer, Author, Actor
Glittering prizes:
• 2001: Awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) ‘For Services to Broadcasting’
• 2004: Awarded the BAFTA Special Lifetime Award for her services to children’s television; Production Company Floella Benjamin Productions Ltd won a Royal Television Society Award for her film, Coming to England
• 2005: Awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters (DLitt) by Exeter University
• 2006: Received a Trinidad and Tobago Lifetime Award
• 2006: Appointed as Chancellor of University of Exeter

The journey from the Caribbean: Floella and her family were part of the social wave from the Caribbean that swept into post-war Britain changing its landscape forever. She was born in Trinidad and Tobago, in the town of Pointe-a-Pierre, in 1949. Floella left the twin-island republic for Britain in 1960 with her mother and siblings to join her father who had left earlier to pursue a career as a jazz saxophonist.  “I expected everyone to treat me kindly and with respect, but Britain was cold, unwelcoming, violent and bleak,” she recalls.

The road to success: Floella largely credits her mother with instilling in her a hunger for education. Having left school to work in a bank, she studied for A-levels at night school. After a spell as a stage actress in West End musicals, she broke into television in 1974 in a prison drama, Within These Walls. She later appeared in other television shows: Love Thy Neighbour; Mixed Blessings; Send in the Girls; and Playschool, a children’s TV programme.  In 1977 she appeared in the movie Black Joy. She formed her own television production company in 1987 and produced Treehouse, Playabout, Hullaballoo, and Jamboree for the British television audience. She wrote her autobiography, Coming to England, in 1995.

The world on Floella: Following Floella’s campaigns to save quality and home-grown children’s TV in the UK, Sally Williams wrote in The Guardian, “Benjamin is still cherished. She was a role model for a whole generation.” Chef Anton Endelman, with whom Floella collaborated on a TV cookery show, told Hester Lacy of The Independent, “Floella is a very unpretentious person, very down to earth. She does have a big personality, which needs space.”

Floella on life: As a children’s TV presenter and author it’s no surprise that Floella’s real passion is for children.  “I believe one should always give as much as possible to try to make a difference wherever or whenever you can. So for the last 25 years I have campaigned on behalf of children. I lobbied the last three Prime Ministers to have a Minister for Children to oversee the interest of children and young people until we eventually got one.”

The Caribbean connection: In her autobiography Floella describes the Caribbean diaspora through the eyes of a child. “When I first came to Britain I felt like a tortured soul, because people abused my colour daily. I was made to feel unworthy but I learnt to come to terms with who I was, partly because my parents told me about my history and my ancestors, which helped to instill confidence in me”. Caribbean authors who have inspired Floella include John Agard – playwright, poet, short-story and children’s writer born in Guyana, and poet Grace Nichols, also born in Guyana. “They have the ability to bring Caribbeanness to life and invoke the culture and essence of life there.”