Fay­ola K J Fras­er

The thread wo­ven neat­ly through­out her life, Rae-Marie Brig­gs has al­ways found her way back to her art. Born in Ma­tu­ri­ta, Ari­ma, Brig­gs grew up with her aunt and un­cle fol­low­ing her par­ents’ sep­a­ra­tion at a young age. While her fa­ther lived in Cana­da, Brig­gs spent many of her ear­li­er years in­ter­mit­tent­ly with her moth­er and fa­ther.

While nav­i­gat­ing a split fam­i­ly unit, Brig­gs of­ten felt a gap left by the ab­sence of a ful­ly present parental fig­ure, and while un­der­go­ing ther­a­py, she was en­cour­aged to use art as an out­let for her emo­tions.

She re­called art as her so­lace dur­ing this time “of con­stant­ly feel­ing an­gry and de­pressed,” and delved in­to cre­at­ing as a cop­ing mech­a­nism to “get back on track.” She drew, paint­ed, de­signed and cre­at­ed, mak­ing birth­day cards which she shared among fam­i­ly and friends as one ex­pres­sion of her artis­tic sen­si­bil­i­ties.

Af­ter at­tend­ing sec­ondary school at St Joseph’s Con­vent, St Joseph, where she stud­ied Sci­ences, Brig­gs went on to the Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean, armed with her dreams of be­com­ing a vet­eri­nar­i­an. How­ev­er, life took a dif­fer­ent turn when she be­came preg­nant at 18 and gave birth to her son at 19 years old.

Re­flect­ing on the dif­fi­cult ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing a young, sin­gle moth­er, she re­called al­so suf­fer­ing from post­na­tal de­pres­sion (PND), al­so called post­par­tum de­pres­sion, and “be­ing sui­ci­dal, want­i­ng to end my life many times. I didn’t have the com­pan­ion I need­ed and was forced to deal with PND, raise my son and make dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions all alone.”

Again, Brig­gs drew strength from her art, and dur­ing the whirl­wind fol­low­ing the birth of her son, a new cre­ative chap­ter in her life slow­ly emerged. She knew that she “had to fig­ure out how to cope, now hav­ing a child who loved me and need­ed me.”

So, she be­gan cre­at­ing art once again, de­sign­ing birth­day par­ty decor, start­ing with a Juras­sic World-themed birth­day par­ty for her son. Her friends, im­pressed by her at­ten­tion to de­tail and cre­ative flair, en­cour­aged her to pur­sue a ca­reer in event decor. This was the be­gin­ning of her trans­for­ma­tion in­to a cre­ative en­tre­pre­neur, as she start­ed mak­ing cake box­es for wed­dings and cre­at­ing decor for chil­dren’s par­ties. De­spite her in­ter­mit­tent strug­gles with de­pres­sion, Brig­gs found so­lace in the act of cre­ation, us­ing her art as a way to cope with the emo­tion­al chal­lenges that came with moth­er­hood.

While preg­nant with her daugh­ter at 25, Brig­gs con­tract­ed COVID-19 and found her­self buried in fears about her health and her un­born child’s health, along­side the grip­ping un­cer­tain­ty of the fu­ture.

She once again strug­gled with post­na­tal de­pres­sion fol­low­ing the birth of her daugh­ter, and yet again delved in­to art as her cop­ing mech­a­nism, a medi­um in­to which she could chan­nel her pain and un­cer­tain­ty.

Dur­ing this time, she trav­elled to New York City to vis­it a part­ner, and she spent sev­er­al months im­mers­ing her­self in the world of street art and mu­rals. Be­ing sur­round­ed by art in the city in­spired her to take her pas­sion to new heights, and it was there that Brig­gs re­alised an­oth­er beau­ti­ful form her art could take—pub­lic dis­play on the grand scale of build­ings and mu­rals.

Her first pub­lic-fac­ing art project was a mur­al in Curepe, which took her a month to com­plete amidst weath­er de­lays, the phys­i­cal strain of work­ing long hours and bal­anc­ing her oth­er re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

“I had nev­er done street art or spray paint be­fore,” she re­mem­bers, “but when I’m paint­ing and draw­ing for oth­ers, I’m able to cre­ate vi­sions in my head from their de­scrip­tions.” It was this in­nate skill that al­lowed her to ex­plore this new facet of her art, along with her dili­gence and dri­ve, hav­ing to “self-talk every day, and sit on the ground paint­ing.”

This ini­tial project was com­mis­sioned by a store named Bold Life Fash­ion, and up­on see­ing Brig­gs bring the mur­al to life, passers-by took in­ter­est and asked her to ex­e­cute sim­i­lar projects for them. In this fash­ion, she be­gan ac­cu­mu­lat­ing a client base, which be­came a turn­ing point for her ca­reer, and she was able to build an art brand, in­clud­ing graph­ics, which she did un­der her brand named Brig­gs Box.

Along with her art, Brig­gs’ re­la­tion­ship with her chil­dren played a sig­nif­i­cant role in her heal­ing process. Al­though she strug­gled with lone­li­ness and de­pres­sion, the love and de­pen­dence of her chil­dren kept her ground­ed. This sense of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, cou­pled with her pas­sion for art, mo­ti­vat­ed her to make a full-time busi­ness of art, and she opened her stu­dio in Ari­ma.

Her stu­dio be­came a hub for cre­ativ­i­ty, and Brig­gs of­fered events like “sip and paint,” bring­ing peo­ple to­geth­er in a cre­ative en­vi­ron­ment. She al­so teach­es peo­ple to draw and in­tends to start class­es and work­shops, as well as host­ing ex­hi­bi­tions out of her gallery in col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er artists.

Her oth­er busi­ness, named Dal­isay De­signs and Decor, is the um­brel­la un­der which she does cre­ative work to de­sign for birth­day par­ties, ba­by show­ers and oth­er events. Re­cent­ly, she has al­so be­gun to cre­ate col­lectibles (trad­ing cards) cus­tomis­able to any pref­er­ence, a pop­u­lar one be­ing those she has cre­at­ed to de­pict var­i­ous as­pects of T&T that are pur­chased as sou­venirs.

As an en­tre­pre­neur, Brig­gs quick­ly learned the chal­lenges that come with build­ing a brand and run­ning a busi­ness. Her ma­jor chal­lenge is the de­mand of bal­anc­ing her bur­geon­ing cre­ativ­i­ty with the prac­ti­cal as­pects of busi­ness man­age­ment.

Re­flect­ing on her jour­ney of en­tre­pre­neur­ship thus far, she mus­es that she “didn’t think it was go­ing to be this hard. I can’t call in sick, I can’t take days off, I have to keep build­ing my brand.”

Al­though she does not have a strong fa­mil­ial ex­am­ple of suc­cess through en­tre­pre­neur­ship, as she is part of a fam­i­ly that has pri­mar­i­ly pur­sued cor­po­rate, sta­ble jobs, she rel­ish­es her tal­ent, know­ing that she “can reach so far, and change the lives of peo­ple, and touch them through art.”