Alison Chapman Andrews Remembered – Repeating Islands

Allison Thompson and Alissandra Cummins (AICA-CS) review the artist trajectory of Alison Chapman Andrews, British born artist whose work in Barbados—including her own production and work on the development of the visual arts— spanned over 40 years. Here are excerpts from Aica Caraïbe du Sud.

The ancient watercourses of my island

Echo of river, trickle, worn stone,

The sunken voice of glitter inching its pattern to the sea,

Memory of foam, fossil, erased beaches high above the eaten boulders of st philip

My mother is a pool

Kamau Brathwaite’s Mother Poem, is dedicated, he writes in the preface, to “my mother, Barbados: most English of West Indian islands, but at the same time nearest, as the slaves fly, to Africa.” Barbados’ most important poet puts into words the spirit of his country, capturing that profound emotional relationship to a tiny 166 square mile island which is home. “These fields and hills beyond recall are now our very own”: lines from Barbados’ national anthem express for a newly post-colonial Caribbean island the need to take possession not only of the land but its stories, its memories and its representation. The older expression “my navel string is buried here” perhaps better conveys the close physical, emotional and ancestral associations that are invested in the earth.

What others have expressed in words, Alison Chapman Andrews captured in paint. She fashioned a visual language that articulated for a nation its most profound sense of selfhood. Chapman-Andrews worked with a singular and independent focus for the development of the visual arts in Barbados for more than forty years. She was renowned as an influential art teacher, an insightful art critic, a passionate advocate for cultural projects, and a keen collector. But her name is synonymous with landscape painting, and it is here that her impact has been greatest. Her strongly patterned interpretations of the Barbadian landscape are amongst the most profound investigations of the environment and our relationship to it.

Arriving in Barbados from England in 1971, during the first decade of political independence, Alison began to paint the physical features of the island, particularly the countryside. She is now acknowledged as one of the first artists during the post-colonial era to investigate the Barbadian landscape, and to translate it in a way that revealed its historical and spiritual significance. Much of the landscape was transformed through the colonial process including extensive deforestation, the oppressive cultivation of sugar cane, and the importation of foreign plants such as the royal palms – markers of the pervasive sweep of colonialism; however, with the advent of political independence it was ownership of the land that stood as the source of pride.

While her landscapes are familiar and identifiable, they are also transformed, edited, articulated, as part of a process of mining them for some kind of essence. She reshaped for Barbadians a vision of their environment into something which conveyed a sense of identity and pride and ownership, and inspired generations of younger artists in their own interpretation of it. Alison was equally generous in acknowledging the influence of others around her, and through this process, a national aesthetic emerged redefining the landscape as a synonym for cultural identity. [. . .]

Writers have often pointed to Alison’s representations of gullies, those rare oases of indigenous vegetation. Trinidadian artist Ken Crichlow noted that Alison spent much time painting the Barbadian gully, “bad lands that are unsuitable for cane cultivation…. the only survivor of the past sugarcane plantation development which overwhelms views of Barbados.” Whittle described these as “a clarion call for those remaining patches of the Barbadian quilt, which have escaped the rape of sugar, to be preserved or simply left alone.”

A 1997 solo exhibition entitled “Sugar Hill Gully” presented a body of large paintings inspired by this singular location. The works were not so much records of the land, but rather investigations of her relationship to it. In a review, Allison Thompson wrote: “…the viewer is engulfed by Alison Chapman-Andrews’ mature vision of the Barbadian landscape. Surrounded on all sides by large canvases of verdant majesty, we are transported into the heart of a St. Joseph gully. Here familiar vegetation metamorphoses under animistic powers, and nature spirits call to us in a language we forgot we knew.”

The impact of her work on the wider Barbadian society was evident when in 1994 she was honoured by the Barbados Assembly of Women and the Environment for “her contribution to the sustainable development of small island states by heightening our awareness of the environment.” In her response she stated, “When starting to exhibit work in Barbados, two decades ago, I was asked ‘why paint the countryside? Everyone knows what cane is like’. This is not true, we don’t really “see” our surroundings. We are virtually blind both to its faults and its beauty. One of the best things about drawing in the country was driving home, eyes opened by the concentration Everything looked different, wonderful, interesting.” [. . .]

For full article and artwork, see https://aica-sc.net/2025/06/11/alison-chapman-andrews-remembered/  

[Shown above: 1) “The Coconut Garden,” Barbados Museum Collection. 2) “Young Palms,” Collection the Barbados National Art Gallery.]