Nicole Bissoo-Williams, painter and ceramist, goes back in time to savour memories through art.
The semi-abstract and realism artist portrays her work mostly using oil and acrylics and dabbles a bit in watercolours but regardless of what she uses the end product takes you down her memory lane.
Nicole, a former art stream student of St Stanislaus, said her passion for art stemmed from watching her father, late artist Patrick Bissoo, as he worked. In fact, according to her, she started drawing before she learnt to write.
“As a child I would paint on my father’s paintings…thinking he didn’t notice and I kept on doing it…. only to find out he left his paint out so I could actually doodle,” she told The Scene recently.
While at school, Nicole was aspiring to be a designer but her then art teacher Shirley Benjamin saw how good she was at art and was the one who planted the idea of Nicole attending Burrowes School of Art after secondary school.
“So I went home and told my dad and he said that’d be very easy to do because many of his friends were instructors there,” she recalled.
And so it came to be that after writing the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate exams at 15, she joined Burrowes. But the idea of becoming a designer was never fully dissolved and she eventually did a few pieces including a wedding dress. In the end, however, she came back to painting. For her, designing could never give the same peace of mind that comes with painting.
“I’m always painting and people are always asking so I stuck at painting. Painting is like therapy. I’m inspired by watching my children; the things they do like climbing the fence. I’m inspired by sceneries as well. When I’m depressed sort of, [it] gives me more vigour in getting my work done,” the artist said smiling at the last mentioned unlikely inspiration.
Other inspirations were her past art teachers, Shirley and George Simon (former Burrowes instructors).
Today, art for Nicole has moved beyond inspiration to become more of therapy for her, as she mentioned earlier. It is a medium through which she releases her anger and all that is silent within her, like her mother’s strength.
“My dad left our home when I was at an early age and my mother had five children to take care of. I used to vent my anger in my paintings which mostly featured mothers and children. As I grew up I bettered them and they were all sold to mothers and other people who related to them. My mother is a stallion; I’ve learnt to be strong because of the example she’s been,” she proudly said.
Though it was not easy, Nicole’s passion for art drove her to be innovative with whatever materials she had. “Though I had a rough childhood, I had a happy one with my mom and my siblings. Because we were unable to afford much I learned early how to be innovative and creative using resources I had available to me. For instance I used a few pointers tied together, then taped, I would pound the ends of the pointers to get it soft and used that as a paint brush. I used real burnt wood as charcoal. I [also] used my sister’s eye pencil to create black and white images of Bob Marley and sold them. I used the money to buy what I needed for art school,” the artist said.
Today, Nicole paints for clients living in Guyana and around the world, some of whom she’s never met. She has done work for persons like Gary Best, Godfrey Proctor of ADMA, Scotiabank and many more but her best customers are her family who she says even pay extra too.
The names and titles of her paintings vary depending on what they are inspired by or what the finished product looks like. Some of her pieces are: Freedom, Purest, Pain, Alone and Innocence. Although she does not have a favourite piece there are a few she is more connected to because of being emotionally attached. “I’m especially attached to one I did whilst in Holland of a female bent over… in a shameful repose. I did it less than an hour with free flowing lines, lots of energy,” said Nicole.
Being a teacher at Burrowes, Nicole teaches first, second and third year students and according to her though her job barely pays and makes her feel like quitting, watching her students and their passion for art and their continual progress is what keeps her going. Though those moments mean much to her, there is one that beat them by a notch; that was the time she helped a visually impaired woman paint an apple. It turned out to be her most challenging experience also but she said, “…she did a wonderful job!”
Challenges
“Some of the challenges myself and other artists face here [in Guyana] would be materials and getting them at a cost that makes economic sense, followed by the limitation of galleries. We have the National Art Gallery and another on Hadfield Foundation… but there is no one stop gallery opened to all fine artists,” Nicole expressed to The Scene.
She continued that foreigners would visit the Art School in search of local art and according to her this is what is needed, “a place to show off our work.”
“We need for our Guyanese society to become more aware of what art is; to be more art educated and art conscious. Majority of the people think it’s about knowing to draw or paint. There’s so much more to art; it’s everything. It’s the designer clothes you wear, the science behind the posh cars you drive, the interior décor of your homes, the exterior of the buildings, the make-up, the vase in the corner, the lamp, the….everything.”
She extrapolated that art has bettered her academically in Science, History and Mathematics. “Art is a combination of all of that.”
And art has continued bettering her, since she said she does not believe herself to be a professional but someone who learns with each day that comes along.
Apart from Art, Nicole is a wife and a mother of two who enjoys spending time with her family and her mother. She loves to read also, if she doesn’t fall asleep, she added. She writes poetry as well, still loves designing, listening to music, dancing and photography.
In a decade or less, Nicole hopes to have her own art studio.
Some of her pieces can be seen on a Facebook Page called Art Corner or on her Facebook Page, Brushstrokes. She can be reached also at email address spik_nic@yahoo.com
