Errol Lloyd

Errol Lloyd
Born	1943 Lucea, Jamaica
Occupation	Artist, writer, art critic, arts administrator

Errol Lloyd (born 1943) is a Jamaican-born artist, writer, art critic, editor and arts administrator. Since the 1960s he has been based in London, UK, where he originally travelled to study law. Now well known as a book illustrator, he was runner-up for the Kate Greenaway Medal in 1973 for his work on My Brother Sean by Petronella Breinburg. Becoming involved with the Caribbean Artists Movement in 1966, he went on to produce book jackets, greetings cards and other material for the pioneering black-owned publishing companies in London, New Beacon Books, Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, and Allison and Busby. Lloyd also had a long association with the Minorities' Arts Advisory Service (MAAS), whose magazine, Artrage, he edited for a while. He is recognised for having done much pioneering for Black art, beginning in the 1960s, when he was one of the few artists "who consciously chose to create Black images".

Eddie Chambers has written of him: "Gifted with an ability to capture likenesses in a range of creative and engaging ways, Lloyd has been responsible for a number of portrait commissions of leading Black and Caribbean males who have excelled in their respective fields over the course of the twentieth century", among them C. L. R. James, Sir Alexander Bustamante, Sir Garfield Sobers and Lord Pitt.

Born in Lucea, Jamaica, Errol Lloyd was schooled at Munro College in Saint Elizabeth Parish, where he excelled at sports and was an outstanding footballer (described in his schooldays the early '60s as being like "a Rolls Royce in a used car lot"). He travelled to Britain in 1963, aged 20, to study at the Council of Legal Education with the intention of becoming a lawyer, but that ambition was superseded by his interest in art (he did not complete his legal studies until 1974), although he undertook no formal training in that field: "I was self-taught and worked in isolation until I was introduced to [the] Caribbean Artists Movement.... I met older artists like the sculptor Ron Moody and they acted like role models for me. From there my work developed." In 1967, he sculpted a bust of C. L. R. James and, having joined the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM), took part in CAM's art exhibition at the University of Kent. He has said: "I was self-taught and worked in isolation until I was introduced to Caribbean Artists Movement.... I met older artists like the sculptor Ron Moody and they acted like role models for me. From there my work developed." While still a student he began to receive commissions to make bronze busts; his subjects have included the Jamaican prime minister Sir Alexander Bustamante, politician Lord Pitt, cricketer Sir Garfield Sobers, and cultural figures including John La Rose, Linton Kwesi Johnson and others.

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