Outstanding Guyanese painter and sculptor Donald Locke passed away at his home in Atlanta, Georgia on Monday, following an extended period of illness. He was 80-years-old.
Born in Stewartville, West Coast Demarara Locke was first introduced to art at a Working People’s Art Class taught by E.R. Burrowes, which he attended in order to pass an exam needed to qualify as a teacher. He is quoted as saying “I became an artist, all in my head of course, and my life was changed forever.”
After being awarded a British Council Scholarship in 1954,
Locke studied at Bath Academy of Art in Wiltshire, England. He was awarded a Guyana Government Award to study at Edinburgh University, Scotland in 1959.
In 1979 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Sculpture and went to the United States.
He was artist-in-Residence at Arizona State University for one year; and then became a permanent resident in 1980. He continued his work in the USA.
Contacted last evening, Curator of the National Art Collection Elfrieda Bissember remembered Locke as a very skilled writer, speaker and painter. ”Sadly we have relatively few pieces of his work in Guyana,” Bissember said. She said that the few National Collection date back to the 1960s.
She noted that Locke spent quite an important part of his working life in the United States.
She said that in his early days, Locke produced a number of paintings based on Amerindian motifs.
He later diversified his art work and became an accomplished sculptor. Locke’s work, mostly sculpture, was influenced as much by native cultures and vernacular myth as by classical European tradition, an announcement from Indra Khanna said. “He seamlessly fused these elements, integrating influences of his various ancestries (African, Asian, European). His last two years have been incredibly productive, with solo shows in the UK and the US, the birth of a new body of works in ceramics, and the celebration of his 80th birthday, the statement.
When Locke last visited Guyana in 2001, Bissember said that certain projects had been outlined but unfortunately these were never completed.
She explained that Locke subsequently became ill. Locke would always send his art catalogues to representatives of the local Art Gallery, she said.
With his first wife, the late artist Leila Locke, he had three children, Corinne, Jonathan and Hew. Jonathan and Hew are both involved in the arts, Bissember told this newspaper.
