Herbie Rose

Perhaps one of the most popular but least reviewed artists in Jamaica is  Herbie Rose. Jamaicans will know his paintings from seeing them in doctor's and dentist's waiting rooms while visitors will have seen them in hotel rooms and lobbies. They are ubiquitous because this are print reprodctions of paintings Rose produced back in the sixties. Tellingly these genre scenes document everday Jamaican life throughout a cross section of society but more often in the rural parishes where Rose captures the hustle and bustle of town centre's with their market places, idiosyncratic tranportation systems, animals and shoppers. Rose's scenes are more realistic than sentimental but locked as they are in a time now past they evoke a certain nostalgia for the push carts, snow-cone vendors, and colourfully painted country buses many of us remember. They remind us of an idyllic and even fictional time in our history that is a glaring contrast to our contemporary realities.