Joanne Sibley exhibition opens
Cayman Compass
Many people equate Joanne Sibley with beautiful watercolour renderings of Caymanian land and seascapes, but it is her lesser known oeuvre, her portraiture, which receives focus in the latest exhibition at the National Gallery, said a press release.
Faces and Figures, curated by David Bridgeman, which opened Saturday at the gallery, aims to give an insightful view of her life and work as an artist.
The exhibition comprises over thirty portraits in a range of media. The works span some forty years of the artist’s career and feature early paintings and drawings including some intimate portraits of her father and children together with a number of preparatory drawings. Also on display are a number of works that were commissioned since moving to the Cayman Islands.
Joanne Sibley was born in Canada where there was a strong artistic influence from an early age. Her father was a commercial artist who painted fine art on the weekends doing portrait and landscape commissions.
She graduated from the University of Manitoba with an Interior Design degree and moved to Jamaica in 1954. It was there that Joanne worked as an artist with an internationally recognised advertising agency. She later joined her husband’s architectural firm and created renderings and artistic interpretations of his buildings for client presentations. The artist went on to obtain commissions of portraits from directors and founding members of some of Jamaica’s leading companies.
In 1980 the artist left Jamaica for Cayman.
Her work is highly collected and forms part of many private and corporate art collections. Today, Joanne divides her time between Cayman and Canada where she continues to paint full time.
The exhibition runs through 30 November.
FYI
Curator’s Talk
A talk on the exhibition will be given at the Harbour Place Gallery by David Bridgeman on Friday, 5 October, at 6pm. The talk is open to all members of the public.