Inspired by his homeland

U.S. based-Guyanese fine artist Dudley Charles’ work is an expression of events and images encountered in his life, reflecting the multicultural, multiracial society of the old and new world.

It is his practice to work loosely on a floor, cutting and re-arranging materials on his canvas. Using wood, dust, paper, pulp and acrylic gel, he creates a textured effect that moves between figuration and abstraction.

As his inspiration, he draws upon a spectrum of cultural influences from his native Guyana, the Caribbean, South and North America. Armed with these images, myths, and folkloric figures, he then evokes a magical landscape leading the viewer into a world wherein he meets the ancestors. Because of the premise on which his work is being made, the appearances of the images on a textured surface often force the viewer to complete the images in their own mind.

“I am lucky to have been blessed with the talent of an artist. If I were given another avocation I am sure that I would have been unfaithful to God, the world and myself,” he said in a recent interview.

The following is taken from the catalogue for ‘Contemporary Expressions: Art from the Guyana Diaspora’ an exhibition U.S. based-Guyanese artist Carl E. Hazlewood organized for the Guyana Cultural Association of New York, Summer 2011.

He wrote, in part, “Outstanding Guyanese artist Dudley Charles has contributed greatly to the development of recent art in Guyana, both as practitioner and producer. Having been brought up at a distance from the recognized ‘hot beds’ of innovation and activity in contemporary art, Dudley, a mostly self-taught painter, experienced the world of Picasso, Matisse, Wifredo Lam, and others, mainly through books. Thus, left to his own devices, as it were, the artist fashioned a mythopoeic art that was responsive to his immediate environment, its folklore, physical, and psychic character. And somewhere along the way, he was able to reconcile his native sensibility with a mastery of those concepts which provide the raison d’être for contemporary artists working today.”

Hazlewood added, “Yet, despite the artist’s considerable ability with quintessentially modernist media such as collage and acrylic polymer emulsion, his technique is put in service of an honest vision modulated by the artist’s specific cultural language. Painterly, faceted, abstracted, the landscapes Dudley conjures into being seem inhabited by elusive presences, kept alive only by racial memory, waiting in the crepuscular hide-and-seek of textured shadows. Mr Charles has represented Guyana at the XII Sao Paulo Biennial, and has shown his paintings in Africa, Japan, Venezuela and Great Britain. His work is in Guyana’s National Collection at Castellani House, plus many public and private collections around the world.” (Photos by U.S. based-Guyanese artist Carl E. Hazlewood)