One of T&T’s most pro­lif­ic artists, Don­ald “Jack­ie” Hink­son, is bring­ing his draw­ings to life in a lim­it­ed se­ries of prints at Fine Art Lim­it­ed with fur­ther plans to in­tro­duce ap­par­el fea­tur­ing some of the artist’s sketch­es.

Start­ing with a fo­cus on pa­n­yards, 82-year-old Hink­son shares his in­sights and the in­spi­ra­tion be­hind this se­ries.

“Six­ty years ago while pur­su­ing a de­gree in fine art I be­came ful­ly aware of the sig­nif­i­cance and pow­er of draw­ing. Since then, I have tire­less­ly pur­sued this method of ex­pres­sion em­brac­ing any sub­ject on a small or large scale, in a wide range of medi­ums, in the stu­dio or plein air (on-site),” he said.

“Some­where in the 1980s, I be­gan car­ry­ing a sketch pad and a draw­ing in­stru­ment wher­ev­er I went re­gard­less of my pur­pose/mis­sion.”

This 40-year ex­er­cise has re­sult­ed in ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200 sketch pads, some filled, and some not, to­talling al­most 10,000 draw­ings of vary­ing qual­i­ty and stages of com­ple­tion.

“On­ly in the past few years have I be­come aware that this is a sub­stan­tial body of work slow­ly ac­cu­mu­lat­ing, a sig­nif­i­cant part of my life’s work. Like most or all artists I would like to show it pub­licly but there are ma­jor dif­fi­cul­ties. Books with sev­er­al pages of im­ages can­not be dis­played like in­di­vid­ual works of art on a wall. Sketch­books are frag­ile ob­jects that can come apart from too much han­dling and, most im­por­tant­ly, many of the sketch­es were hur­ried­ly done us­ing im­per­ma­nent ma­te­ri­als vul­ner­a­ble to light and hu­mid­i­ty,” Hink­son ex­plained.

Un­til now, this artist has re­sist­ed the mak­ing of prints, but with tech­nol­o­gy and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Fine Art Ltd, he feels con­fi­dent re­pro­duc­ing very lim­it­ed edi­tions of se­lect­ed vul­ner­a­ble sketch­book draw­ings. These works would be dif­fi­cult to ex­hib­it in con­ven­tion­al ways.

Michael An­tho­ny Hosang of Fine Art ex­plained: “Each print is care­ful­ly craft­ed on pre­mi­um, archival-qual­i­ty pa­per us­ing high-grade inks and cut­ting-edge tech­niques to en­sure un­matched colour ac­cu­ra­cy, vi­bran­cy and longevi­ty. These prints are de­signed to pre­serve the essence of Jack­ie’s vi­sion for gen­er­a­tions to come.”

As­sist­ing him with this project is his son David Hink­son.

“Grow­ing up and see­ing Jack­ie con­stant­ly work­ing, my sib­lings and I some­times be­ing the sub­jects of his draw­ings, I was al­ways aware of his dis­ci­pline and ded­i­ca­tion to his craft. Sim­i­lar to how a mod­ern teenag­er might cov­et and be in­sep­a­ra­ble from their mo­bile phone, his sketch­pads have be­come a con­stant ap­pendage of him, like faith­ful com­pan­ions.

“But I was com­plete­ly awestruck when dur­ing COVID lock­downs I went through his nu­mer­ous sketch­pads and ex­hi­bi­tion para­pher­na­lia to bring some or­gan­i­sa­tion to it. That this im­mense col­lec­tion of works could qui­et­ly ex­ist, hid­den away in closed books on a shelf out of reach some­where in a closed room, nev­er seen and nev­er to be seen.

“I am very aware that Jack­ie wish­es very much to have his works dis­played, dis­cussed and com­ment­ed on, so I am qui­et­ly thrilled that he is tak­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do this and so very hap­py to be able to as­sist him in this re­gard,” David said.

But not all of Hink­son’sworks can be shown.

With this re­al­i­ty in mind, he has do­nat­ed 60 of them to the Al­ma Jor­dan Li­brary of The UWI to be archived and con­served with a wish to have them all on pub­lic dis­play like any oth­er con­ven­tion­al ex­hi­bi­tion.

Hink­son added that dis­cus­sions are now un­der­way with NALIS for such a dis­play which will rep­re­sent the main themes in the sketch­books which range from the hu­man fig­ure to street life, ar­chi­tec­ture, sport, Car­ni­val, land­scape, and more.

The first se­ries fo­cus­es on pa­n­yards.

Hink­son ex­plained: “This ex­pe­ri­ence has been very close to me since my very ear­ly teens when I saw the yards of bands like Red Army and In­vaders in their phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ments.

“Decades lat­er, with big­ger bands, more ad­vanced in­stru­ment tech­nol­o­gy and greater so­cial par­tic­i­pa­tion I still find mov­ing and com­pelling the ex­pe­ri­ence of bands like Rene­gades and All Stars in their yards against the back­drop of the his­tor­i­cal­ly im­por­tant hills of Laven­tille as well as some small­er com­mu­ni­ty bands in an en­vi­ron­ment of tra­di­tion­al ar­chi­tec­ture.”

In tan­dem with the print ex­hi­bi­tion, Hink­son is com­mit­ted to his Car­ni­val mur­al in St Ann’s.

“Again I will be dis­play­ing hun­dreds of feet of these mu­rals, with ex­ten­sions, in Fish­er Av­enue, St Ann’s as I have for the past three years,” he said.

David said: “This street ex­hi­bi­tion, al­most whol­ly self-fi­nanced with­out any im­me­di­ate com­mer­cial ben­e­fit to him, speaks vol­umes to his ded­i­ca­tion to his craft and the wider artis­tic com­mu­ni­ty and rep­re­sents part of his con­tri­bu­tion to the so­cial and cul­tur­al fab­ric of T&T, a place that he is in love with.”

This print se­ries is yet an­oth­er ex­pres­sion of that de­sire to pre­serve, show­case, and con­tribute to this coun­try’s vi­su­al arts.

Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, the Hinksons have been ex­per­i­ment­ing with de­signs for ap­par­el.

“We have been work­ing with a de­sign­er to as­sist in bring­ing these to fruition once we can work out the tech­ni­cal as­pects of this,” Hink­son added.

Re­port­ing by Natasha Said­wan

natasha.said­wan@guardian.co.tt