Big art from a small place
reprinted courtesy myharbourisland.com with added links to our artist pages

(October 2002) Just as young lovers are first attracted to each other's surface beauty and then come to appreciate subtler strengths, new visitors to Briland are drawn first to the gorgeous beach and most striking cottages. But upon return visits, they come to notice the Island's many forms of subtler beauty: a ramshackle cottage, children playing in the streets, the look of the bay on a cloudy day.

The artists creating work about Harbour Island express the full range of its features and moods. From watercolors of sun-splashed cottages to bronzes of ebullient mermaids, most of the art sold on Harbour Island is literal, representational art, the kind of thing visitors buy to keep alive their experience of the island, according to gallery owner Charles Carey. But that does not mean the art is unsophisticated. In fact, as Harbour Island has become more popular with sophisticated visitors, the Island is engendering top quality work from artists with international reputations.

Watercolor vs. oil

Of course, it's the watercolors most people are first drawn to, such as the lush, complex colors of William Ternes' "Bahama House" shown at top. But every artist brings his or her own vision. And thus Wade Ray's watercolors cast the Island's houses with striking bold blocks of color while Brilander Harvey Roberts uses a photo-realistic style to show us the houses with every clapboard crisply drawn.

When we've had our fill of the watercolors' heady delights, we are ready to notice that even more exciting world-class work is produced in oil/acrylic. These are works in which a shadow cast by palm or fig can call forth that same quiet of soul as if one stood upon the scene—and glimpsed a truth beyond it.

First there are the more classical feeling oils such a serene bench by the bay scene by Jo Ann Ritter or children playing in the bay by Quince Quaintance, both artists coincidentally using a palette of soft pinks and deep greens to produce a sense of timelessness. Also on the gentle side, we might notice soft pinks and grays in Don Stone's work such as a scene of dawn at Fort Point, or soft golds and grays in Anne Burnett's Methodist Church.

A more intense experience is provided by artists such as Shari Erickson with sharp-edged porch railings carved of vivid blue-purples. And then beyond that Susan Katz gives us fiery bursts of color with her in-our-face pineapples or firecracker-hued fish.

An eye for subjects

For some of the artists creating work about Harbour Island, it is their choice of subjects we might first be struck by. Stephen Scott Young, the artist with the greatest international reputation, creates watercolors and etchings that trace the development of a young local girl from a reticent child in pink flip flops to an intense adolescent with a Mona Lisa gaze.

Long-time visitor from Canada Elizabeth Berry originally became famous for her dappled-light cottages, but in recent years her interest has turned to the island's people, with expressionistic splashes of color for the schoolchildren, farmer Anthony, or the crew that hangs outside the Vic Hum. Eleuthera-based Sally Hayes paints mermaids in Eleuthera's Jade Pond. And Ellen Butler paints bay-sized underwater scenes such as the one pictured behind Charles in the accompanying article about his Princess Street Gallery.

Where are they from?

Harbour Island is blessed to have a few of its native sons producing popular work. Briland-born Harvey Roberts, whose Welcome Sign piece may be the Island's most well known image, has opened a gallery of his own, the Briland Brushstrokes, and Eddie Minnis in Eleuthera is equally popular for his music. Also living across the bay and married to a Bahamian is famous American artist Stephen Scott Young, whose watercolors have been compared to those of Andrew Wyeth.

A few of Nassau's internationally known artists also show their work on Harbour Island, including primitivist ex house painter Amos Ferguson shown at right.

But most of the art shown here is produced by a few dozen artists who have been coming down for many years from the United States, Canada, and England, with the largest number being from New England. Why? Charles explains that artists from Maine or Connecticut are sometimes drawn by the similarities between the cottages of Briland and those of their home states. In addition, while some Loyalists fled to the Bahamas during the American revolution, others moved to Nova Scotia, thus creating ties between the two regions. Can you tell whether Don Stone's boat scene at left is from Briland or his native New Hampshire? Come to Harbour Island to check it out.