MORE AND MORE, we are seeing that Guyana possesses an emergent group of excellent figurative illustrators who, apart from exhibiting their work, can enhance the design of locally produced children and adult books, design book covers, and even create their own graphic comic books. One of the traditional functions of figurative art is to illustrate narrative texts, or bring stories, from the Bible to myths, to visual life.

However, many of the world’s greatest figurative artists like Picasso, Lam, Alechinsky, Saura, de Kooning, Botero, Tamayo, etc, brought something new to figurative art, which sent their works far beyond illustration.

A recent exhibition of mostly small acrylic and watercolor paintings by Merlene Ellis, on show at Castellani House, was definitive proof of this illustrative visual style. The other artists, all of them of the same generation, born during or after the late 1960s: Sandra Alleyne, Lori Ann Jacobs, Akima Macpherson, Anil Roberts, even Carl Anderson, have received training, short or long, at the Burrowes Art School, or the UG Arts Faculty.

Needless to say, most of their teachers would have received similar training at home or abroad, so what is emerging from this generation of visual artists are the fruits of their instructive classes.

The metaphorical use of the word ‘fruit’ is instructive here. Fruits are ‘real’ or figurative, and illustrators are defined by their ability to clearly, unambiguously, work within the ‘figure’ of some real object, person, or natural phenomena.

In most of the works of this new generation of visual artists mentioned here, illustrative skill is dominant. This is a quality which, to the average viewer, denotes a ‘successful’ work of art, because they can generally see what is being made.

In contrast to abstract painters — for example, such Guyanese painters as the late Aubrey Williams and Cletus Henriques, Frank Bowling and Arlington Weithers, both of New York today — the works of Ellis, Alleyne, Jacobs, Macpherson, and young Anil Roberts, are all guided by shapes or figures which already exist, and which they use to illustrate what they paint or draw; whereas Williams, Henriques, Bowling, Weithers, and other Guyanese abstract painters, even if they are influenced or inspired by something ‘real’, do not reproduce it, though they might reduce it to an ambiguous outline.

The abstract artist creates by the free act of painting, nothing else; in other words, it is only when painting that their actual works emerge, not before. Whereas the illustrator is already intending to put down one or more ‘real’ or specific shapes or figures, regardless of the casual manner in which it may be executed. For this reason, the illustrative work of art may seem more complete, accomplished, or clear, whereas the abstract work will seem uncertain or even bewildering. But unless you already know all the answers to life’s creative questions and mysteries, you may be fascinated and fulfilled by the arrangement of shape, colour, and line that abstract works find, or discover, in their quest to encompass the ultimate, the highest spiritual creative effect of life and living.

On the other hand, the illustrative visual artist delights the viewer’s habit of trying to recognise ‘real’ figures behind the application of paint, etc. We immediately get this impression when we enter the two small rooms at Castellani House where Ellis’s recent works were on exhibit. Even when her paintings are thick brush strokes and layers of paint applied with a knife, or a brush loaded with watercolour or acrylic applied to paper or canvas, they trace the shape of something or someone being illustrated.

This is easily confirmed by a large acrylic palette knife painting like ‘Eclipse over rooftops’, or the small watercolour, ‘Drums and Guitar’, which, as objects, help the artist to match tones in illustrated shapes.

Yet, in one of the best little watercolours, ‘Dry Leaves’, the smart choice of objects like various dry leaves, which in reality are often seen lying pell-mell on the ground, allow the artist to come close to a cool abstraction, because the very subject and setting are also random and unclear.

If this painting had been much bigger, Ellis might have achieved a genuine abstraction through sheer scale, which encourages more spontaneity. Another of her best paintings is ‘Sundown’, a watercolour where a few broad brushstrokes, or a sponge, is pulled across the paper and around a circle in cool monochromatic tones, then allowed to bleed at the edges. This is more ‘painting’ than illustration, because its emptiness and simplicity leave no space for fidgeting and adjusting, which helps paintings to appear ‘successful’.

In general, Ellis’s show, and shows by the other artists of her generation mentioned here, come close to the miscellaneous technical ability one sees displayed at British Academy Fine Art shows.

However, one dormant value of their illustrative works await the emergence of a Guyanese professional publishing industry for local consumption and foreign export, where the talents of Ellis and her peers can be put to much helpful social use, whether accompanying poetry collections, children’s books, book covers, or entire individual comic book series.

Significantly, some of their teachers, like George Simon and Philbert Gajadhar, both excellent illustrative Fine Artists, have already done such work.

Simon did the cover of Ian Macdonald’s poetry collection, ‘Essequibo’, and murals in a similar vein.

Ellis and her peers, therefore, remain an asset to the still untapped necessity of Guyanese publishing.