Michael Robinson, Gleaner Writer

ALTHOUGH WIDELY recognised as one of her generation's most important painters, Seya started out her creative life as a writer. As a young girl growing up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in the 1930s, Seya was exposed to various cultures through the many immigrants that populated the city. Her early experiences nurtured a natural sensitivity to universal energies and the human condition.

Although she didn't "take writing too seriously" as a youngster, a family friend, himself a poet, read some of her work and suggested to Seya's mother that she do courses at the University of Iowa. After a stint, which spanned the better part of two years and included a specialised poetry class, Seya says she realised she no longer needed to be there. Having already got a handle on "what it was all about", her poetry would continue to grow through intuitive cultivation.

Mode of expression

Writing remained Seya's main, if somewhat private, mode of expression, and life went on.

Some time after the end of World War II, Seya says she went to New York to visit her sister and ended up staying for two years. It was there that she met Karl Parboosingh at a poetry reading in Greenwich Village.

Recently back from the war, Karl had fought in Europe as a soldier and was in the beginning stages of his artistic career. The first time she saw the man who would introduce her to Jamaica and to new modes of self-expression, Seya says "it was like a light turned on in my head." The feeling was apparently mutual, as Karl engineered for himself an introduction to the striking young Lebanese woman.

A short while after their first meeting, Parboosingh asked Seya if he could 'use' her place. "I really didn't know," she laughs, "that he was going to move in." The two were later married in a Lebanese church and eventually moved to Jamaica in 1957.

Distinct artistic paths

It was at the appeal of Parboosingh, as she calls him, that Seya started to paint. The request to paint 'with' him was more of an invitation to the journey that is art, than an actual invitation to create works standing side by side. The Parboosinghs did exhibit together at least once, but their artistic paths seem to have been as distinct as their styles and personalities.

Seya's quiet lyricism is apparent in all her visual and written pieces. The same sensitivity and minimalist approach exists in her paintings that is evident in her poetry. She sees the world in all its complexity then experiences it and filters it out on to canvas or paper in powerful simplicity.

Far from being a 'bible thumper', Seya's work exudes her reverence for life, love and humanity. She is a child of the universe and all forms of expression are the same to her. They are a chance to manifest herself, and aspects of herself, in this reality. For her efforts, the soft-spoken artist has received numerous awards for her work, including a bronze Musgrave Medal awarded in 1988.

She has often thought of compiling a book of her poems, since, as she puts it, "Everyone has seen the paintings, but they don't know the poetry." There is a part of her, it seems, that she has been stowing away between the lines that she would like the rest of us to see.

Seya's poems