Painting in Paradise Travel Video duration – 4.44 minutes Father of Caribbean Impressionism Conversations with Sir Roland Richardson Travel Video If you keep your eyes, sort of, open to whatever comes in, you’ll see all kinds of things that do not confirm to your logic. Once you respond to them, by acknowledging them, then they are there and then when they become here, they bring a force with them that keeps on moving this towards a thing that is coming alive. (Music) There is a picture that we are drawing that is made up of elements that I brought but which I asked my asked my three ladies who came today to put together on the table for me. Oh Even after they’d done that, you know, I proceeded to change it so we have to be completely spontaneous How does St. Maarten influence your painting? I am the first native-born artist in the history of the country. So we don’t have a long artistic heritage in the Caribbean. You take the globe, we are situated almost on the middle of it, so which means that we are exposed to a maximum amount of sun. You add to that we are small islands that don’t hold atmosphere, so that we get whatever is happening, so usually we don’t hold anything, so here it is clear. And the colors that manifest in our environment are extremely intense. And color is what attracts me to everything that I do. St. Martin is to me the most ideal spot for what I am interested in – which is color. What do you prefer to paint? Color Anything with color? Yeah, color is always my subject and my painting is about forty years. And I have mainly studied color in nature and very often, away from everything man-made, including humans but the accumulated revelation, the knowledge, or may be, you call it the information, the inspiration, whatever, the revelations that I’ve had concerning color are only going to bear the fullest fruits when it is passed to a human being. Because the landscape could be spectacular, the seascape or the flamboyant tree - one has to be extra ordinary --- powerful as a subject but as a form of life, the sea and I, the tree and I and me and a person is a whole different relationship. And so, to able to take what I’ve learnt from Nature and see how it applies to a human being that to me is the highest aspiration and challenge. I also feel that there is something totally unexplored in general, in the relationship between the artist and the subject. We usually think than the artist selects the subject and determines and is always the principle player. I am advocating a whole different approach. – if I find myself in the field in front of a tree, it drew me - the player. Inspiration You what “inspire me” is - “In spirit” Inspiration means when the spirit comes in to you. So, if the spirit is coming to you and we are catalysts, I am very happy. There it is.