–with art exhibition, ‘Dialogue with Wilson Harris’

THE National Art Gallery will tomorrow recognise the 80th birthday of celebrated Guyanese and Caribbean artist, Mr Stanley Greaves. The paintings and sculptures of Greaves have been exhibited in Brazil, Cuba, Columbia, The Dominican Republic, and London. Some are held in private collections in Guyana, Venezuela, Barbados, Cuba, Jamaica, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

“Dialogue with Wilson Harris” will feature a series of 24 paintings inspired by the legendary Guyanese writer Sir Theodore Wilson Harris. Harris, who initially wrote poetry, has become a well known novelist and essayist. Harris was born in New Amsterdam and after studying at Queen’s College, he became a government surveyor, before taking up a career as lecturer and writer.
His time as a surveyor gave him in-depth knowledge of the savannahs and rainforests, forming the setting for many of his books, with the Guyanese landscape dominating his fiction.
Harris has been awarded honorary doctorates by several universities, including the University of the West Indies (1984) and the University of Liège (2001). He has twice won the Guyana Prize for Literature. He was knighted in June 2010 by Queen Elizabeth II and in 2014; Sir Wilson Harris won a Lifetime Achievement Prize from the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.
Stanley Greaves, who is a man of music, has also received high awards from the people of Guyana and Barbados for his excellence as a painter, sculptor, and teacher. During 2003, the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, recognised him as an Honorary Distinguished Fellow of the Faculty of Humanities and Education.
The visual artist—or, as he prefers to be known, “a maker of things”— is known for his distinctive vision of Caribbean realities, much like Wilson Harris.
The exhibition of paintings will commence on Saturday November 8 at 5pm at Castellani House, the Guyana National Gallery of Art situated on the corner of Vlissengen Road and Homestretch Avenue in Georgetown. Admission is free.

(By Raveena Mangal)