-Exhibition runs until June 4
‘LIGHT AS a Feather’ is a Terence Roberts exhibition of abstract paintings that have been influenced by pre-Columbian and Amazonian Indian cultures.
The exhibition is currently on at the Venezuelan Institute for Culture and Co-operation at 106 New Garden Street Queenstown.
As the artist explained, the term ‘light’, especially tropical light as a sensory and mental experience has always mattered in his paintings, as is the idea that they (his paintings) should be free of any weight on the human spirit.
“Feather, as a work of art which enables flight,” he said, “is an abstract design from nature which attracts me because of my ongoing interest in the cultural foundation of the entire Americas, from north to south.”
The compositions, all acrylic-on-canvas,   comprise forms, colours and lines which suggest interpretations of the lives of the Indians, and are intriguing in their attempts to communicate the realities of these lives without  any observable aspect of reality.
‘Man and Mastodon’, one of the several pieces which stand out, for example, is  a combination of shapes and colours which represent the battles between the pre-historic Indians and the Mastodons,  large, tusked, elephant-like  mammals now extinct.
In this abstract, both Man and Mastodon, neither recognizable by any known shape, are combined as one, and share the same eye.
Next to the abstract of Man and Mastodon is the head of a spear, as though dug up as an archaeological relic, and there is a line which Roberts identifies as an equatorial line indicating a division of time zones.
The rest of the painting comprises other colours and forms that may mean much to the artist, but  which I rather suspect would mean very little to the viewer, unless they were  operating at an intuitive level.
“The level of reality in the painting,” the artist said, “is the level of reference to things; grasping totalities not realistic details… The use of colours like yellow, which produces sunlight; like pink, which depicts sensuality…
“New ideas based on ancient things that people have done. This carries a value that lasts. The painting can’t be exhausted with multiple interpretations; every time you look at it, you see something you didn’t see before.”
‘Tipi Family’, another abstract, is based on the Tipi where the Indians lived. The   designs around it comprise abstracts of animals and people.
The painting shows a circular hole through which they crawl to get into the tipi, and other shapes which can be seen as a globe, a universe or cosmic entity, depending on the viewer’s interpretation, or willingness to see the universal in the particular.
Roberts, an artist since 1968, has gained much experience and exposure while living in Canada and a number of European countries and in Venezuela. He’s been studying the cultures of the Amazonian Indians for decades, he says.
‘Light as a Feather’ is  a creation founded on the lives of Indians in Guyana, Venezuela and Brazil, and the  Chumash and Pomo of the California coast and valleys, all of whom  mastered the art of abstract feather assemblages on blankets, cloaks, headbands and belts.
“The feather dawned on me as a spiritual wand of lighthearted joyful bonds between different people sharing a unique and precious continent,” Roberts said, adding:
“Of course, the feather is also an object which wrote and signed agreements and treaties, whose spirit of cooperation and creativity contributed to the wellbeing of the Americas.”
“This exhibition,” he said, “celebrates the progressive quest of abstract painting.”
‘Light as a Feather’ runs at the Venezuelan Institute for Culture and Cooperation until June 4.