Llewellyn Xavier OBE (born 12 October 1945) is a Saint Lucian artist.

Biography

Xavier left Saint Lucia for

Barbados Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, and the most easterly of the Caribbean Islands. It occupies an area of and has a population of about 287,000 (2019 estimate) ...

in 1962, working as an agricultural

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for a time. A friend gave him a box of

watercolors Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting method”Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to t ...

, and he was soon drawn to art. His first exhibition was a great success, and soon his reputation was established. In 1968, Xavier moved to

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, where he became a pioneer in the field of

mail art Mail art, also known as postal art and correspondence art, is an artistic movement centered on sending small-scale works through the postal service. It initially developed out of what eventually became Ray Johnson's New York Correspondence Scho ...

. He enrolled in the school of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1979, and for a time was a Cistercian

monk A monk (, from el, μοναχός, ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedica ...

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. After a time, he left the

monastery A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone ( hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer whi ...

, marrying and returning to Saint Lucia in 1987. Probably Xavier's most important work to date is a large cycle of collages created around 1993. Titled ''Global Council for Restoration of the Earth's Environment'', it was first shown at the Patrick Cramer Gallery in

Geneva , neighboring_municipalities= Carouge, Chêne-Bougeries, Cologny, Lancy, Grand-Saconnex, Pregny-Chambésy, Vernier, Veyrier , website = https://www.geneve.ch/ Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevr ...

in May of that year. The collages incorporate all manner of

recycle Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects. The recovery of energy from waste materials is often included in this concept. The recyclability of a material depends on its ability to reacquire the p ...

d materials, including naturalist prints from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and

postage stamp A postage stamp is a small piece of paper issued by a post office, postal administration, or other authorized vendors to customers who pay postage (the cost involved in moving, insuring, or registering mail), who then affix the stamp to the f ...

s from many countries. They also include signatures of various world leaders of environmentalism and of a number of

conservationists The conservation movement, also known as nature conservation, is a political, environmental, and social movement that seeks to manage and protect natural resources, including animal, fungus, and plant species as well as their habitat for the f ...

. Xavier is also well known for his

oil paintings Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of ...

, characterized by multicolored pearls of paint applied to the surface of the canvas using a series of special tools, a technique developed over the past few decades. The brilliant palettes of the paintings draw inspiration from the Caribbean environment in which Xavier lives and works. During his lengthy career, Xavier has also produced drawings, watercolors and mixed media works. Xavier received the OBE in 2004 in recognition of his contributions to the art of the Commonwealth. He is the founder of the Saint Lucia Sculpture Park, intended to bring public art to the landscape of the island. Xavier's work is in the collection of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, the American Museum of Natural History, the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

, the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, and the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

, among others. In 2016 he was honored with a solo exhibition at Phillips in New York. On the occasion of the exhibition, Edward Dolman, the CEO of Phillips, called Xavier “one of the greatest artists ever to emerge from the Caribbean…a dynamic voice in the dialogue between globalization and localism.”

References

*Veerle Poupeye, ''Caribbean Art'', London: Thames and Hudson, 1998.

External links

Llewellyn Xavier
- website
Unix GallerySaint Lucia Sculpture Park
{{DEFAULTSORT:Xavier, Llewellyn 1945 births Living people Saint Lucian artists Officers of the Order of the British Empire Collage artists 20th-century painters 21st-century painters 20th-century male artists 21st-century male artists