Introduction
[Today we are privileged to reprint another priceless archival treasure from the past. It is a tribute to Guyana’s “Greatest Artist” E. R. Burrowes written by “Oleo” in 1966. Like the other pieces from old chronicles that we recently featured it takes us back to a front row seat to the state of Guyanese Art more than five decades ago. Quite specifically, it paints a portrait of Burrowes, legendary founder and master of the Working People’s Art Class that nurtured so many of Guyana’s greatest artists, and the man after whom the national institution the E R Burrowes School of Art was named. “Our Greatest Artist” by Oleo was first published in the “Chronicle Christmas Annual” 1966 edited by Charles J. Chichester, published in Georgetown, Guyana in December, 1966 and sold for 75 cents.
We are grateful for the opportunity to access this from the collection of George N. Cave, formerly a linguist at the University of Guyana, which he also served as Registrar. Mr Cave was honoured last week at the Conference of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics and the Society for Pidgin Languages hosted by the University. He was presented with an award for his services to Caribbean Linguistics during a special session of the conference at Turkeyen.]
A TRIBUTE
BY OLEO
Edward Rupert Burrowes passed on from the scene while I am away, on vacation and study of originals in the art galleries and museums of the United States of America.
Tears welled in my eyes as I read a friend’s message to me of his passing. I mention my business of studying original paintings because it is in this context that I came to know Edward Burrowes.
He was one of my teachers and one of the significant ones. In fact, he had been the teacher of practically every one of the significant artists of the present and previous generations.
He was certainly not Guyana’s finest painter, but undoubtedly, one of its greatest artists. All things together, in the areas of art and education, Edward Burrowes will later be remembered as another of Guyana’s truly great sons.