05/11/2025
Medulla Art Gallery presents
"NANAN DRAWS PART 2"
An exhibition of recent work by Wendy Nanan
NOW SHOWING
Opened: Monday 3rd November, 2025
Closing: Thursday 13th November, 2025
(*There will be no formal opening but one can visit anytime for the limited duration of the exhibition)
Gallery hours: Mon-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat 11am-2pm
Venue: Medulla Art Gallery
Address: #37 F**t Street, Woodbrook, Port of Spain.
For more information please contact:
Telephone: +1(868)680-1041, +1(868)622-1196
Email: [email protected]
FREE ADMISSION / OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Wendy Nanan was born in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago in 1955. After a foundation course at Manchester Polytechnic she obtained the BFA (Painting) at Wolverhampton Polytechnic in 1979. She currently lives and works in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. She has been exhibiting regularly since 1985, her most recent show in 2021/22 and largest solo exhibition of the artist’s life’s work, which included key projects from her repertoire over the last four decades at The AMA | Art Museum of the Americas of the Organization of American States (OAS) USA, a retrospective exhibition curated by Trinidadian-Canadian scholar Andil Gosine.
Nanan has also exhibited in Bonn, Germany; Paris, France; London, England; Nova Scotia, Canada and Dominican Republic. She is perhaps best known for her popular series Idyllic Marriage in 1997 and Cricket, Lovely Cricket first exhibited at the Clico Gallery, Port of Spain in 2005.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION:
Wendy Nanan still wants to show us what she believes. That drawing, specifically drawing from life, is essential to the honing of the artist’s craft, whatever the discipline that artist works in.
This show comprises drawings from life drawing sessions, but different, expanded into narratives with simple devices, a string of flowers, the curve of an arch, the pattern on a carpet which echoes the curve of a hair style or the model's body.
One wonders which came first, the chicken, or the egg. When she came to the drawing class had she already decided on how she would position the figures on the paper to suggest stories, or did she make it up in the act of drawing the models, or was it back in the studio, thinking of what the figures suggested, a bit of creative masterminding. Whatever, the figures are now inhabiting worlds of their own. It is left to the viewer to interpret, and bring their own experiences to the work.
We have heard stories of her work ethic, she brooks no idle conversation during the sessions, a loud 'shush' will erupt, after which the only sound to be heard will be the passage of her pencil across the paper, her scrambling with huge lengths of paper, which she tosses behind her as the poses change, and the aura of her serious intent, or as she has been heard to say - "we didn't come here to play dolly house, concentrate".
