Girls at the Vanity Table
Long has been dubbed “the chronicler of our times”, given his propensity for capturing day-to-day scenes of life in the Cayman Islands over the past several decades. This intimate domestic scene depicts a woman at her vanity, staring into a mirror under a harshly illuminating light. The presence of a young girl, whose gaze is intently fixed on the central figure, lends the work an unusually introspective quality.
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).
