Stanley Greaves

Stanley Greaves (n. 1935) is a Guyanese painter and writer who is one of the Caribbean's most distinguished artists. Writing in 1995 at the time of a retrospective exhibition to celebrate Greaves's sixtieth birthday, Rupert Roopnarine stated: "It may be that no major Caribbean artist of our time has been more fecund and versatile than Stanley Greaves of Guyana." Greaves himself has said of his own creativity:

"I still don’t talk about myself as making art! Other people do that. I am a maker of things. In the early days, I found empty matchboxes, cigarette boxes, bits of string, wire, empty boot-polish tins, whatever, and made things. Drawing was just another activity, and it still is. My favorite medium is still wood, of course. My hitherto secret preoccupation with writing poems, which has now come to light, is another form of making. Recently at the University of Birmingham, where I did a reading, I was asked if the paintings influenced the poetry, and I said, 'No, they come from the same source.'”

Greaves was born in a "tenement yard" on Carmichael Street, Georgetown, Guyana. He studied Art in Guyana with Edward Burrowes in the Working Peoples' Art Class (1948–61) and from 1963 to 1968 attended University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the UK, where he studied painting, majoring in sculpture for the B.A.Hons degree in Fine Art. He also earned a Diploma in Art Teaching. He was a Fulbright Scholar from 1979 to 1980 at Howard University, where he did printmaking and sculpture for the MFA degree.

In Guyana Greaves taught at Sacred Heart Primary, St. Stanislaus College (his old schools), Berbice High School, Queen's College, from 1971 to 1975, and was the first Head of the Division of Creative Arts at the University of Guyana from 1975 to 1986. He left Guyana in 1987 and has been resident in Barbados since that time. He now resides in North Carolina.

...
Wikipedia