Donald Cuthbert Locke (17 September 1930 – 6 December 2010) was a Guyanese artist who created drawings, paintings and sculptures in a variety of media.
He studied in the United Kingdom, and worked in Guyana and the United Kingdom before moving to the United States in 1979.
He spent his last twenty years, perhaps the most productive and innovative period of his life, in Atlanta, Georgia. His eldest son is British sculptor Hew Locke.
Biography
Birth and early education
Donald Locke was born on 17 September 1930 in Stewartville, Demerara County, Guyana.
His father, also called Donald Locke, was a skilled carpenter who made furniture and his mother, Ivy Mae (''née'' Harper), was a primary school teacher.
The family moved to Georgetown in 1938, where Locke attended the Bourda Roman Catholic School and then the Smith's Church Congregational School.
He went on to the Progressive High School, graduating in 1946.
He was accepted as a student at the Broad Street Government School, where he became increasingly interested in drawing.
In 1947 Locke attended a
Working People's Art Class
The Working People's Art Class (WPAC), founded by Edward Rupert Burrowes in 1945, was the first established art institution in the colony of British Guiana, now the country of Guyana.
A number of well-known Guyanese artists were taught at the WPAC. ...
(WPAC) taught in Georgetown by the local artist
Edward Rupert Burrowes
Edward Rupert Burrowes (15 September 1903 – 1966) was a Guyanese artist and art teacher who founded the Working People's Art Class (WPAC), the first established art institution in Guyana.
The E R Burrowes School of Art, an undergraduate in ...
.
This inspired him to take up painting.
Burrowes has often been called the "father of Guyanese art".
Writing about Burrowes in the 1966 Guyana Independence Issue of ''New World'', Locke describes how he was constantly engaged in "technical exploration", including making his own paints from unlikely ingredients and conducting experiments "with balata, buckram, tailor's canvas, rice bags, bitumen, concrete and ... clay mixed with molasses."
In 1950 Locke graduated with a Teacher's Certificate.
Locke became a regular contributor to the annual WPAC exhibitions, and for a while was secretary of WPAC, helping to organise exhibitions in different locations. In 1952 WPAC gave him the First Prize Gold Medal Award for his abstract painting ''The Happy Family''.
He was given a British Council art scholarship in 1954, the last such scholarship to be awarded in Guyana in this period, with which he was able to study ceramics at the
Bath School of Art and Design
Bath School of Art and Design is an art college in Bath, England, now known separately as Bath School of Art and Bath School of Design. It forms part of the Bath Spa University whose main campus is located a few miles from the City at Newton Pa ...
at Corsham, England.
The Guyana Department of Education provided an additional scholarship that funded his third year at Corsham.
He was taught painting by William Scott and
Bryan Wynter
Bryan Herbert Wynter (8 September 1915 – 2 February 1975)Bernard Meadows.
He graduated in 1957 with a Teaching Certificate in Art Education.
Guyana and United Kingdom
Returning to Georgetown in 1957, Locke began teaching art at Dolphin Government School and at WPAC.
In 1958 he married Leila Locke (née) Chaplin, a teacher whom he had met at Corsham.Elfrieda Bissember, ''60 Years of Women artists in Guyana 1928–1988 a Historical Perspective'', Guyana Women Artists' Association, 1988.
He did not have normal potter's equipment, but was able to make and successfully fire large earthenware pots using an improvised kiln.
In 1959 the Guyanese government gave him a grant to study for a master's degree in fine arts at Edinburgh College of Art, a school in the University of Edinburgh.
There he met the artists Dave Cohen, Sheldon Kaganof and Dion Myers, who introduced the ideas of the
California Clay Movement
The California Clay Movement (or American Clay Revolution) was a school of ceramic art that emerged in California in the 1950s.
The movement was part of the larger transition in crafts from "designer-craftsman" to "artist-craftsman".
The editor o ...
to Britain.
For many years Locke's work reflected their influence.
In 1962 Locke obtained a grant from Edinburgh University to go to Florence and Ravenna, where he undertook historical research
He completed his graduate thesis in 1964 and returned to Georgetown to take up a position as Art Master at Queen's College, where he taught from 1964 until 1970.
He began painting due to lack of facilities for pottery.
In 1969 he obtained a British Council bursary that let him take leave from Queen's College and return to the Edinburgh College of Art for research in ceramic techniques.
In 1970, after a trip to Brazil sponsored by the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he resigned from Queen's College and moved to London, where he obtained work teaching ceramics.
His work began to incorporate materials such as metal, wood, leather, fur and ceramics.
He gained a growing recognition for his ceramic work, and in 1972 was invited to exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum in the ''International Exhibition of Ceramics''.
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
in Sculpture, and for a year was an artist in residence at
Arizona State University
Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the ...
. His first of many bronze sculptures were cast by the Arizona Bronze Foundry in 1980.
He divorced Leila in the late 1970s,Claudette Earl, "Leila Elizabeth Locke – an appreciation", ''Chronicle Family Magazine'', 19 April 1992. and obtained permanent residency status in the United States, marrying Art Consultant Brenda Stephenson in 1981.
In 1983 he moved to Phoenix, Arizona.
Locke lived in the southwest of the United States for 11 years. During this period he was the Arizona correspondent for '' Artspace'' magazine,
for which he wrote a series of articles. He also wrote for the '' Phoenix New Times'' and for '' Arts Magazine''.
In 1989 he temporarily abandoned sculpture in favour of painting, and the next year moved to
Atlanta
Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,71 ...
, Georgia.
His paintings combined heavy paint, photographs, cloth, wood, metal and found objects mounted on canvas.
In 1992, with a five-year grant for a studio at the
Nexus Contemporary Art Center
Atlanta Contemporary is a non-profit, non-collecting institution located in the West Midtown district of Atlanta. It is dedicated to the creation, presentation, and advancement of contemporary art by emerging and established artists.
Atlanta Con ...
, he returned to sculpture.
Locke taught part-time at
Georgia State University
Georgia State University (Georgia State, State, or GSU) is a public research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1913, it is one of the University System of Georgia's four research universities. It is also the largest institution of hig ...
and at the
Atlanta College of Art
The Atlanta College of Art (ACA) was a private four-year art college located in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1905, it was the oldest art college in the Southeast when it was sold out by the Woodruff Arts Center board of directors to the Sa ...
, retiring from teaching in 1996.
He continued to write about art. Thus a review by Locke of the ''Okiek Portraits'' exhibition of photographs of Okiek people in traditional dress appeared in '' Creative Loafing'' of November 1997.
He contributed a weekly review to this paper for three years.
He lived in Atlanta for the remainder of his life, with growing recognition from exhibitions of his work in the US and Europe.
An outgoing person, with a generous character, Locke enjoyed entertaining people at dinners where he did all the cooking.
He loved to talk about art, and was an interesting and engaging speaker. He has been called "a larger-than-life personality and a wonderful storyteller, as influential in his conversation as he was with his art."
Donald Locke died at home in Atlanta on 6 December 2010. He was survived by three children from his marriage with the artist Leila Locke: Corinne, Jonathan and Hew. Hew Locke, born in Edinburgh, is also a well-known artist.
Work
Locke's work was highly varied. Marianne Lambert, an Atlanta curator and art patron, said: "His expressiveness ran the gamut from frenzied drawings to the spare, clean lines of his sculptures." According to Carl Hazlewood of Newark, associate editor at ''NKA, a Journal of Contemporary African Art'', "Donald's art grew out of sophisticated European traditions acquired during his studies in Guyana and Great Britain, but it also was infused with the myths and poetic aspects of his Guyana homeland and its folklore."
A prolific artist throughout his life, Locke in his earlier modernist work was influenced by other schools. He came into his own as a unique individual in Atlanta under the influence of local folk artists such as
Thornton Dial
Thornton Dial (10 September 1928 – 25 January 2016) was a pioneering American artist who came to prominence in the late 1980s. Dial's body of work exhibits formal variety through expressive, densely composed assemblages of found materials, ofte ...
.
Talking of the influence of the open savannah landscape of Guyana on Locke's early work, one writer said Locke was "concerned with the question of space as it confronts the artist: what to do with nothingness; how to lead the eye of the viewer into a vast expanse through the narrow frame of a single painting."
In the United Kingdom his best known work may be the paintings and sculptures in ''The Plantation Series'', described as "forms held in strict lines and grids, connected as if with chains or a series of bars, analogous he has said, to the system whereby one group of people are kept in economic and political subjugation by another."
A reviewer commenting on his work ''Trophies of Empire 1, 1972–1974'' said it "comprise robust disconnected forms that eerily echo the cultures and geographies he had experienced. Heavy metal vessels, solid wood forms and found objects are placed together creating awkward human effigies or challenging abstract assemblages. Their loaded erotic and sometimes violent symbolism bring to mind mournful memories from the past and issues related to slavery, identity and sovereignty. His are sombre images of the Black Atlantic world that Locke straddled so boldly."
Exhibitions
Locke was Guyana's representative at the 12th São Paulo Art Biennial in 1971. He exhibited his ''Two Sculptures from a Ritual Fertility Suite'' in Hungary in 1975 at the International Biennale of Sculpture. In 1976 he had his own show at the Roundhouse in London, and in 1977 his work was displayed in Nigeria at FESTAC. His ''Trophies of Empire'' was first displayed at the ''Afro-Caribbean Art Exhibition'' in 1978, and was shown again at London's
Hayward Gallery
The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre in central London, England and part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings (the R ...
in 1989 in '' The Other Story'', an influential show that helped to increase public awareness of the quality of work of Asian, African and Caribbean artists, and also featured other Caribbean artists such as Aubrey Williams and Ronald Moody, as well the paintings of Black British artists including Sonia Boyce. The art critic
Brian Sewell
Brian Alfred Christopher Bushell Sewell (; 15 July 1931 – 19 September 2015) was an English art critic. He wrote for the ''Evening Standard'' and had an acerbic view of conceptual art and the Turner Prize. ''The Guardian'' described him as ...
said that Locke's sculptures in ''The Other Story'' showed exquisite mastery and extraordinary ingenuity.
In 1994 Locke went to
Ecuador
Ecuador ( ; ; Quechuan languages, Quechua: ''Ikwayur''; Shuar language, Shuar: ''Ecuador'' or ''Ekuatur''), officially the Republic of Ecuador ( es, República del Ecuador, which literally translates as "Republic of the Equator"; Quechuan ...
, where his work was shown in the exhibition ''Current Identities'' at the Cuenca Bienal of Painting, along with the work of other artists including Whitfield Lovell,
Philemona Williamson
Philemona Williamson (born 1951) is an artist from New York City.
Biography
Williamson was born in NYC in 1951.
Her African-American parents were employed by a wealthy Greek family, and she grew up in their Manhattan home.
She recalls a divers ...
, Emilio Cruz and Freddy Rodríguez.
A 2002 exhibition at the Solomon Projects gallery in Atlanta featured rough wax sculptures that represented the sacred symbols of Locke's Guyanese creole heritage.
In 2009 an exhibition of about fifty of his recent sculptures and paintings named ''Pork Knocker Dreams'' was staged in England.
"
Porkknocker
Pork-knockers are freelance Guyanese prospectors who mine for diamonds and gold in the alluvial plains of the Guyanese interior. Pork-knockers have been responsible for discovering large deposits of gold and diamonds. The name "pork-knockers" ref ...
" is the name given to gold prospectors in Guyana: Locke's father had prospected as a young man.
Locke exhibited in many other group and solo shows, including in
São Paulo
São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for 'Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the Ga ...
, Brazil;
Medellín
Medellín ( or ), officially the Municipality of Medellín ( es, Municipio de Medellín), is the second-largest city in Colombia, after Bogotá, and the capital of the department of Antioquia. It is located in the Aburrá Valley, a central re ...
, Colombia;
Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...
Whitechapel Gallery
The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the f ...
in London, United Kingdom;
Nottingham
Nottingham ( , locally ) is a city and unitary authority area in Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, England. It is located north-west of London, south-east of Sheffield and north-east of Birmingham. Nottingham has links to the legend of Robi ...
, United Kingdom;
Aljira Center for Contemporary Art
Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art was an artist-centered space in Newark, New Jersey, United States founded in 1983, designated a Major Arts Organization by New Jersey's State Council on the Arts.
Aljira displayed the work of both establishe ...
in Newark, New Jersey; Nexus Biennial and the Master Artist Series, Atlanta, Georgia; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. His gallery shows included Nexus and City Gallery East in Atlanta and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, Arizona.