Catboat Shelter
This image of the Caymanian catboat and the traditional shelter fashioned from crossed branches and dried silver thatch palm fronds honours the long tradition of boat building in the Cayman Islands, which had largely come to an end by the late 1950s. Known for his simplified, decorative style and colourful depictions of traditional Caymanian scenes, Long’s painting speaks to the waning of Cayman’s maritime industry and the social and economic upheavals that would quickly transform society here during the 1970s and 1980s.
About the Artist
Charles Long
b. 1948
Born in West Africa, Charles Long grew up in Swaziland and England, where he attended Farnham School of Art. He settled in the Cayman Islands in the late 1960s and became a founding member and first secretary of the Visual Art Society. Long has been dubbed a “chronicler of our times”, a phrase that became the title of a 2002 retrospective of his work at NGCI. Other key exhibitions include the Santo Domingo Biennale (2003) and Carifesta X in Guyana (2008). Long’s highly collectable work forms part of the permanent collections of NGCI and the Cayman Islands National Museum. NGCI exhibitions include the solo show Charles Long – Chronicler of Our Time (2002), Portrait of an Artist (2003), All Access (2015), Mediating Self (2017), Tropical Visions (2019), and Island of Women: Life at Home During our Maritime Years (2020).
