Artists relieve waiting pain

Three graduates of the Community College Art and Design Program have volunteered their creative energies to demonstrate how art can bring enjoyment to the pains of waiting in the children’s clinic at Milton Cato Memorial Hospital.

The project is sponsored jointly by the Rotoract Club of St. Vincent and the Inner Wheel Club, as one of several things being done to enhance that area of the pediatric clinic. {{more}}

The mural depicts an underwater scene and is designed to stimulate the interest of children in their local natural environment whilst at the same time provide some distraction to the tedium of waiting for medical attention.

Artists Abigail Haynes, Rose-marie Lewis and Roland Layne noted that many areas in Kingstown could benefit from well-designed mural that can have an educational value as well as attracting the attention of visitors to local cultural themes.

For Abigail and Rose-Marie, who graduated this year, it is their first experience of working on a mural. But Roland Layne, who graduated in 2003 and teaches art at the Boys Grammar School had experienced mural painting in August 2004 when, along with fellow graduate Dane Jack and their art teacher Vonnie Roudette, they painted the largest mural in the island at the new Resource Centre of the Community College.

“The children’s clinic mural is one of a number of activities that art graduates are encouraged to undertake to develop a cooperative creative spirit and to keep working together in the interests of art appreciation, public awareness and their own creative development” says Vonnie Roudette.

She sees the graduates as pioneers of a new national artistic consciousness and believes that in the future they will play a vital role in all areas of national cultural development- from education, to the business and tourism sectors.