A passion for preserving culture through art

BACK in “the days” – more than 60 years ago – all the wives of the British High Commission diplomats would go for art classes with the renowned Edgar R Burrowes, and Conrad Meertins, who was a student of Queen’s College at the time, would go just to look on and wash their brushes.

“Boy Conrad, I see like you like this art,” Mr Burrowes would tell the teenager. As a little boy, at 10 years old to be exact, Meertins participated in a painting competition and won. His interest had always been in art, perhaps as a result of his Dutch ancestry which included a line of boat builders – a genealogy that has provided the talent for woodwork and craftsmanship that has undoubtedly influenced the direction of his art.

Today at almost 80 of age, the father of four has anything but slowing down in his art career on his mind. With the training he received from the man himself, Mr Burrowes, Meertins has developed a type of art that hardly anyone else does.

“He [Burrowes] taught me every art form; everything he taught me! I was always there. It was quite a privilege to be taught by one of Guyana’s great art masters and he took a personal interest in me because he saw that I was really interested,” Meertins shared in an interview at the Guyana Chronicle.

After school, he became an airline pilot and flew as captain with several of the major airlines in the region. “But I always did art. I had the time to do it and I did not need the income from it to live; I was able to develop it quite conveniently because there was a lot of ground time.”

Meertins was able to develop his three-dimensional art while waiting in the crew room to fly. “It took me about 40 years to develop this technique; because it is a different genre altogether, nobody is doing this type of art because it’s a combination of art and woodwork and is something which I would have developed over a long period of time. There are not many artists doing the kind of work I am doing; not in the Caribbean and even worldwide,” the artist explained.

Having retired, Meertins began pursuing his art career full-time. He designs residential and commercial interiors, including offices, restaurants, and nightclubs. He also likes to do historical buildings, kokers, and other places of interest.

His ‘Van Meer’ collection can be viewed at the Academy of the Arts on Carmichael Street – an institution he started just prior to the pandemic. Despite accomplishing little due to the pandemic, Meertins kept working on the facility. Just before Independence Day, he is planning to have an opening exhibition and will do a ‘Sip and Paint’ event around the same time. “I want to make my place one where artists and even non-artists can come and paint something or do something. I will have both adult and children’s classes,” he shared.

Meertins concedes that it was a bad idea to open the art studio at the time he did, because he could not make any money due to the pandemic. Due to his love for art, however, he continued going to the studio every day. “Every day, from Sunday to Sunday, I leave home at 7 in the morning and get home after 12 to 14 hours. Every day I do my art; that is where I am happiest.”

He believes that for someone to learn well, they’d have to be really interested. Sadly, though, he has not found anyone who reminds him of himself in his younger days.

“Persons are not like that today. You have to be consistent and want to do it. A lot of people get excited and three weeks later, they don’t come back.”

For those people who go to the Burrowes School of Art, he thinks that some time should be spent preparing them for the commercial world after completing their studies. “A lot of artists come to me with good portfolios but they can’t make any money. For people to be interested, they have to show initiative because it’s hard to even get people to look at your art these days.”

Offering some advice to fellow artists, Meertins urged: “Don’t give up. Explore every possible opportunity. Even if nothing happens at certain levels, you keep doing your art. If you stop and wait for that opportunity, you stagnate yourself…which is something I never did. I just kept on and on. Over the last three years, everyone said to me why are you going to the studio and you’re not making any money? But I went every day for three years.”

Meertins has just completed models of the proposed Demerara Harbour Bridge that will be built soon by the Chinese.