Traces I
Employing the artist’s characteristically colourful palette and segmented compositional style — a trait reminiscent of stained-glass windows — Chollette’s work is embued with a deep-felt sense of spirituality. In Traces I the artist depicts the physical and spiritual journeys that brought Caymanian people from original lands to ultimately settle in our Islands, inspired by maritime maps of travels and our society’s drive to import and export things like turtles, mahogany, sea bird eggs, as well as the transplanting of inherited culture by both free and enslaved peoples. “The universe has memory”, the artist states, “hence the map seems as if it is ‘floating in the air’, like a divine record of the past waiting to trigger new journeys. What will new comings and goings bring to the new day?”
About the Artist
Randy Chollette
b. 1975
George Town–born Randy Chollette is an intuitive, self-taught artist who earned recognition early in his career by winning ‘Best in Show’ at Blue, an exhibition at Kensington-Lott Fine Art Gallery in 2002, and The McCoy Prize People’s Choice Award in 2003. His work is often distinguishable by its signature black outlined mosaic configuration. A member of the Native Sons collective, he moves confidently between Realism and abstraction, and his Rastafarian beliefs are woven into the style and subject of his paintings. His work forms part of many private collections and the public collections of NGCI, the Cayman National Cultural Foundation, and the Cayman Islands National Museum. NGCI exhibitions include: Arreckly: Towards a Cultural Identity (2007), The Persistence of Memory (2011), Founded Upon the Seas (2012), tIDal Shift: Explorations of Identity in Contemporary Caymanian Art (2015), Native Sons – Twenty Years On (2016), Speak to Me (2016), Saltwater in their Veins (2017), Cross Currents – 1st Cayman Islands Biennial (2019), and Island of Women: Life at Home During our Maritime Years (2020).
