Dr Earl McKenzie's panting, 'A Bluebird Named Poetry', from his third solo painting exhibition, opened officially at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts, UWI, Mona, last Tuesday. - photo by Mel Cooke
After he had analysed the paintings in Dr Earl McKenzie's third solo exhibition, mounted on the walls of the Round at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts, UWI, Mona, last week Tuesday evening, Professor Edward Baugh called the audience's attention to one in particular.
It was 'A Bluebird Named Poetry' and Baugh concluded "that painting, that bluebird, is music".
It was an appropriate analysis, seeing that the audience had been invited to the official launch of an exhibition where 'Painting is Silent Poetry'. Four paintings were mounted in pride of place on easels behind the evening's speakers, three of them - 'Sculpture Among Palm Trees', 'The Almond Leaf' and 'My Wise Old Lamp' - with poems of the same names beside them. The other was 'The Young Poet'.
And after the detailed examination (Baugh found it intriguing that McKenzie largely showed the backs of human figures, making us wonder about what we cannot see), McKenzie made the connection between the images he had painted and the muse and music of his verse.
"My paintings begin with ideas, while my poems tend to begin with emotion," he said. He noted that the paintings had been grouped, with various sets based on poems, folklore, dreams and ideas.
With the moments and concepts the paintings have captured for posterity around him on three sides, McKenzie gave voice to his poetry at some length, often explaining the circumstances from which they came and relating the poems to specific paintings. So 'Sculpture Among Palm Trees' was written while he was studying outside Jamaica, as was 'My Wise Old Lamp', the light from his study lamp illuminating a bookshelf in such a way that he was reminded of city buildings ("we always leave unexplored cities behind").
'Burglar Bars' was written when he returned to Jamaica and he was struck by the proliferation of the metal barriers, one house in Mandeville completely covered - even the roof. In that poem, McKenzie described the bars as "tombs for our freedom". 'The Almond Leaf', the title poem of an entire collection, was written when he was marooned by rain in Treasure Beach at the 2001 Calabash International Literary Festival. In the painting, the leaf, which fell at McKenzie's feet and led to him taking up brush and pen, is in the foreground, prominently large against the sea in the background.
He told the story of how he became a poet as well, writing a 'recitation' (as he did not know the word poetry) which his mother said was good. He took it to school the following day and another student grabbed it from his pocket during roll-call. A teacher who saw the infraction asked for the paper, read it and asked McKenzie if he had written it. When he said yes, the teacher took him to a room at the back of the school, sat him down, equipped him with an exercise book and said "you are a poet. Look through the window. Write poems".
Beautiful morning
"He left me all morning. It was the most beautiful morning I ever spent. I heard the beatings and the spelling lessons," McKenzie said. Chances are, he looked like 'The Young Poet', the fourth painting mounted behind him.
The teacher started reading his poems at concerts and, McKenzie said, "next thing I knew I was the school poet!"
And he read poems about childhood, including 'Bedward's River', and there was laughter when he good-naturedly described 'A Remembrance of Place Names' (all from his childhood), concluding "they moved my school to Fern Hill/Where I once painted the fern plant's pattern on my hand".
Moving to the ending of the launch reading, McKenzie read 'The Makers' for his parents and the tragic 'Pen' about a child who died in an earthquake in China found with a pen in her hand, wrapping up with 'Basket'.