By Sana Rose, Contributor 
'Waiting' oil on handmade paper, 2001.
WONDERLAND FINE Arts Gallery located on the Red Bones The Blues Café property, is host once again to yet another solo exhibition. This time around, it is well-known artist Bernard Stanley Hoyes whose serigraphs (original prints) of his paintings, especially have been gobbled up by the local and foreign art markets.
The artist currently resides in California and made his way to the United States in 1966 where he received a Bachelor of Fine Art Degree in Painting and Graphic Design from California College of Arts and Crafts, which was renamed last year to become the California College of the Arts.
An artist who believes in community, Hoyes has been involved with community projects and at the beginning of his career especially, showed a propensity for socio-political references. The social references in the form of his ancestral history have remained with him in the form of Revivalism, scenes for which he is renowned. The ubiquitous prints have even found their way on to television sitcoms such as It's a Different World and The Steve Harvey Show as well as many corporate and private collections. Along the way, he has received many awards.
A PROLIFIC ARTIST
A prolific artist, Hoyes offers for viewing images that have been shown, sold and seen over a number of years during his career. The paintings but moreso the serigraphs show his characteristic bold, unmixed complimentary colour scheme, which is manifested in large shapes mimicking the movements and curves of Revivalists, entranced in their ceremonial rites. In the case of Washday by the River, a scene that depicts a typical happening within Jamaican rural life.
The temperature of the paintings is hot due to the brightness of the colours juxtaposed with each other. The graphic nature of his works caricatured people, relatively large flat shapes with narrow tonal ranges and the repetition of these shapes reverberate in the graphic techniques he has employed in making prints of his paintings and prints in general (a sole etching Chorus is also part of the show). These in turn are reflections his graphic designing background.
THE GROUP OF WORKS
Among the group of works are ink drawings from the Rag Series, demonstrating a way of making images that he began in the 1970s. These works employ a technique where a rag is dipped in ink and laid on paper and once removed, the artist pulls images from the surfaces. These are his most promising pieces but in this show there are no new explorations. In fact, most of the same pieces were shown in a major solo exhibition held in 2001 at another local gallery. So three years later, it is rather disquieting to note that Hoyes has brought back many of the same pieces as well as images, which we know and have seen from him over a number of years.
When we view the catalogue that marked 25 years of his career in 1995, left in the exhibition space for our perusal, we find some of the same images and we recognise the dates of the pieces. In the case of the works from the Rag Series, those in the catalogue, which are dated in the latter 1970s, are much more exciting and dynamic images. While the technique shows possibilities and an anticipated development, the works in the show, dated 2000, do not echo or surpass that expected vibrancy. On the whole, it would have been great if we were presented, not only with new images, but also pictures that display and express Hoyes' formal and conceptual search that further push the creativity of the works beyond what we have come to know and expect from him.
The exhibition continues.
