Nashauna Drummond, Staff Reporter
Left: Intuitive artist John Daley explains his first painting 'Night Vision'. At Right: Leonard Daley's untitled painting currently on display at the 'Like father like son' exhibition currently on at Grosvenor Galleries. - Norman Grindley /Deputy Chief Photographer
Artist Leonard Daley, died in March of this year but has left a literal living legacy in his son John who has joined the ranks among Jamaica's best self-taught artists (Intuitives).
'Like father like son' is the title of John Daley's exhibition currently on at Grosvenor Galleries, 1 Grosvenor Terrace. The exhibition showcases the work of the father son duo.
"As a child I would go to the country and see his paintings and wonder at the colours without taking the painting into consideration," said John of his father's work. Ten years ago Leonard moved to Kingston and they lived together. It was during this time that his son's interest in craft really flourished. "I used to help out drawing in something if he wanted me to. Then I saw how he worked, tried it and fell in love with it."
Three years ago the 34-year-old electronic technician put down his screw driver and picked up a paint brush. "Anything I get in my hand I paint. I love painting and from I start, the idea just comes along so it's when I'm done that I see what I have created. If I have a painting mood, I just have to paint."
Night vision
Daley's favourite painting is his first that was converted from a painting given to him by his father.
"At first I didn't want to sell it," Daley says of 'Night Vision'. He explained that about six years ago
his father gave each of his 16 children one of his paintings. He told his father he was going to redo his work and his father supplied him with the paint.
John is the only one of Daley's children who has followed his father's footsteps to become an artist. However, he explains that their work is very different. He noted that when he finished his first painting his father liked it and said to him, 'I hope you don't start a competition'. "I do my own thing", said Daley. "I work very hard for it not to look like his, the abstract is the only thing we have in common."
He explained that his work has boundaries while his father's doesn't. "I use boundaries where you can outline certain things. He has no boundaries, all in one. He never did natural scenery, he expressed himself in his painting".
In the programme for the exhibition currently on at the National Gallery's called Intuitives III, art journalist and critic Edward Gomez had high praises for Leonard's work. "For me the late Leonard Daley may well have produced one of the most original and impossible-to-classify bodies of work I have ever seen. Partly abstract partly surreal, partly realist it is always deeply spiritual," he wrote.
John Daley is however his father's number one fan. "My father is my favourite artist. His is the work I admire. His (work) looks like someone is trying to express something they can't, he puts his mind in the painting and a part of him is in his painting. As soon as he died, I decided I needed to expose his paintings."
The exhibition closes on August 12.
