This article under the caption of “November 22 and 23,” now slightly amended, was published on 23 November 2015 aboutStanley Greaves, but included references to Roy Brummel and Wordsworth McAndrew, cultural and artistic giants in their own right. Since we will, sadly, not be having the opportunity of a 90th Birthday Stanley Greaves exhibition, as we did the landmark 80th Birthday exhibition, I ask Guyana to join with me in paying tribute to and honouring Stanley Greaves, a unique Guyanese monument.
Stanley Greaves and Roy Brummel were born on November 22 and 23 respectively. To celebrate their birthdays, they get together on the 22nd, celebrate through the night until the 23rd, so that both birthdays would be given due recognition. I heard the story twice from Stanley Greaves: first, at his exhibition of new paintings, ‘Dialogue with Wilson Harris,’ at Castellani House in celebration of his 80th birthday, and second: at a brief address at a book launching by Roy Brummel.
Roy Brummel, an educator and folklorist himself, had written a book, ‘Mih Buddybo Mac’ (My Brother Mac), Part 1, on the life and work of Wordsworth McAndrew, and had introduced it to the Guyanese public at Moray House. He had also introduced his novel, Halfway Tree, a must read. Roy’s biography of Wordsworth, his novel, the works of Stanley Greaves and of Wordworth McAndrew, show that although circumstances have taken them far from Guyana, Guyana has never been far from them, as Roy said. Inspiration of a homeland and of a common heritage stirs the creative impulses of most artists, wherever they may be located. The late E.R. Burrowes, Mahadai Das and Rooplall Moonar, remained in Guyana. Desmond Alli and many others now live and work in Guyana.
Most of Wordworth’s creative efforts took place while he was in Guyana when surrounded by the myths and stories from the nooks and crannies of our past and present and among the people who store, relate and believe them. Stanley Greaves, and now Roy Brummel, continue to add to Guyana’s artistic wealth. Hopefully Wordworth’s ‘wondrous writings, much of it inspired by the Guyana he had not seen for years,’ contained in a ‘battered knapsack,’ as described by Sir Ron Sanders when Wordsworth was his houseguest in London, will one day be published.
A special word about Wordsworth McAndrew in place of the recognition denied him and others by his county of birth. He created a body of work of enduring power and beauty, which has inspired many. When we had just become independent in 1966 and were searching for ourselves, Wordsworth appeared, as if he was specially sent by a higher power, to demonstrate to us at that precise and troubled time when it was necessary, the value and beauty of what Guyana had and to help our minds to adjust and transition to the new reality of independence. Described as a ‘supreme master of Guyanese speech and orality’ by Professor Frank Birbalsingh, ‘Ol’ Higue,’ his best known poem, will remain a monument to his creativity and dedication to Guyana.
Reading books on art by the uninitiated is always a task. But not so for Rupert Roopnaraine’s “The Primacy of the Eye, the Art of Stanley Greaves.” This appreciation of the works of Stanley Greaves, who is also a poet and musician, is gripping, unusual for writings about art. Not only is the book well written, in a style that sustains interest, as one would expect of something coming from Dr. Roopnaraine, but the rendering of the subject tells the story of Guyana from the vision of Stanley Greaves. As Dr. Roopnaraine said, “if all other records of modern Guyanese life were to disappear, a study of Greaves’s paintings of compassion of the fifties and sixties would be enough to tell us how we lived, what yards and houses we inhabited, what tools our hands held, what musical instruments consoled us, what forms of commerce we engaged in, what hats and pants and dresses and shoes we wore, what leaves and birds and flowers lit up our lives.”
Stanley Greaves’s statements are of universal application derived mainly from Guyanese themes. These indigenous images speak to the world about universal issues and values. In a chapter entitled “The Politics of Desolation,” Roopnaraine examines a series of fourteen paintings starting with ‘Prologue: There is a Meeting Here Tonight.’ First, only someone with Roopnaraine’s specific political background and knowledge of art could have written this chapter. Second, only someone with Greaves’s specific experiences of Guyana could have executed this series, with their compelling images of dogs, microphones and barrels, representing politicians in their various supplicatory or other endeavours. Roopnaraine commenced the chapter with a review of E. R. Burrowes’s ‘Guyana, Land of the Dolorous Guard,’ which he described as a ‘fine an image of colonial waste as any,’ it sets the tone for the ‘desolation’ of Greaves’s meeting series.
I can do no better than Roopnaraine when he wrote: “I am struck by the extent to which all of these pieces, and indeed all the subsequent pieces over the years…can be seen to constitute a world, with its own internal laws and rhythms, its own codes, its own distinctive aura, an imaginative universe renewing and enlarging itself in a restless dialogue with the real world of men and women and nature.”