Jackie Hinkson is an artist who describes himself as “a Trinidadian who spent his childhood and youth with…broad-minded parents and five siblings." He spent most of his youth in the heart of Port-of-Spain, then called Cobo Town. Residents came from the upper-middle, middle and the lower classes. The urban and extensive early rural experiences left an indelible impression on his mind. He realized from his early teens that he was "inevitably going to be an artist; and has since then committed himself wholly to his art and later also to his family.” He was gracious enough to take time from his busy schedule for an interview with Architecture Caribbean. Enjoy!

JH: The years of my friendship and collaboration with Peter Minshall were my late teens and early twenties, before he had matured into an outstanding and acclaimed designer. Those earlier years were ones of optimism and euphoria since we were young and ambitious and experienced all the excitement of knowing that we were going to be artists, a very rare ambition in those days. I sometimes helped him with his early backdrops for light operatic shows and for his first attempts at costume design. In these projects, he was unbelievably meticulous and indefatigable. I gladly helped although I knew that this was not my domain.

It was in our painting collaboration that our personality differences showed up. We painted happily together in our back yards, in our homes, in the Queen’s Park Savannah, by the wharves etc. His style was more colourful and polished and sometimes his imagery strongly symbolic. My style was more muted, atmospheric. He was very articulate, learned, and sometimes expected me to be. We delighted in the works of some local artists and in particular in the work of the French Impressionists. The latter influenced us greatly. We discussed endless subjects related to art and other areas. Our collaboration culminated in an exhibition of five young artists in 1961. It was with high optimism that we left for Europe in 1963.

AC: How do you keep your creative life when you're working under pressure?
JH: I am not sure what kind of pressure you are referring to here; domestic?; financial?; deadline? I suppose in the end it comes down to discipline and focus.

AC: Where do you go for design inspiration?
JH: Design is not a word that painters generally  use. If, as I suspect, you mean something more like composition - and even that concept needs a lot of defining - I would say that I find it in my physical and social environment. Then, of course, I edit and distort to suit my vision.

AC: What do you want people to see/ feel/ experience when they look at your work?
JH: I have no idea. I do not think along such lines. Maybe simply to see one man’s vision of his environment, of the world.

AC: You were commissioned by the Trinidad & Tobago government in 1982-1985 to produce One Hundred pieces of work showing the "disappearing architecture" of the country, tell us more about this experience.
JH: Perhaps because I grew up in a typically fine example of an early 20th century  wooden, gabled-roof, fretwork ornate house, and perhaps because the humble wooden homes, the shops and barrack yards of Port-of-Spain and the rural and plantation architecture of Trinidad had left such an indelible mark on me, I devoted a large number of years to the capturing the traditional and disappearing architecture of the island. This Government project was an important chapter in this commitment. I traveled throughout the country searching for fine examples of the vernacular architecture and rediscovering many from my childhood experiences in the rural and coastal districts. Importantly, I always felt, when executing these works, that I was trying to do more than just record or chronicle, I was also exploiting these images for their emotional and symbolic potential, to allude perhaps to ideas about age or change or death or decay or simply to pay tribute.

AC: Our Theme for this issue of Architecture Caribbean is HARMONY & GEOMETRY. What does “Harmony & Geometry” mean to you?
JH: The term is far too vague and broad for me to adequately address here. To me the notion of harmony is not a fixed one that can be applied to all visions. What is harmonious to one mind or in one era is not necessarily so in another. However, if I were to simplify it and apply it in a more limited way to my area of expression, I would say it is the arrangement of shapes and areas into relationships that evoke in a viewer some sensation of deeper beauty or truth. Impossible to avoid vagueness, as you see.

AC: What do you think about Architecture Caribbean and its goal to highlight Architecture and the Visual Arts in the Caribbean and other parts of the world?
JH: Any attempt to educate the public in the area of the Arts, particularly in young countries such as ours, is a desirable and noble one.