May 27, 2008 — Preston Doane, a popular St. Croix landscape painter since the 1970s, is moving in a new direction with a set of fantastical, symbolically rich works, collectively called "Odyssey of the Little Mermaid."
This new set of paintings incorporates African, Taino, Carib and Danish themes and symbols, with fantastic or dreamlike imagery. The show is centered on seven works, consisting of acrylic painted on linen- or canvas-wrapped board, all relating to the 1840s Danish sugar industry and its ties with the West African slave trade.
Doane, who moved to the Virgin Islands in 1970, is well known for his lush island landscapes and town scenes. Recently, though, Doane has begun moving in a new, sometimes darker direction, incorporating V.I. historical and cultural themes into the paintings.
"People like my scenes and seascapes, but I began to get tired of repeating myself, so I got more into what I've been thinking about instead of what I see," he says.
Though already conscious of the social issues arising from the Caribbean history of slavery, Doane was inspired to begin this series by a 2000 piece in the magazine Modern Maturity, written by an African-American woman who had traveled to Ghana to trace her family's roots. At the mouth of Ghana's Elmina River on the Atlantic Ocean stands Elmina Castle, the remains of a large slave-market holding facility where an ancestor of the story's author was processed before getting shipped off to slavery in the United States.
Some of the canvases have dark, unsettling images, suggesting pain and suffering. Some combine African masks and emblems with the Danish flag, Taino petroglyphs and island scenery.
"I am using Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid story as a way to bring in the Danish influence," Doane says. "The sugar they took back to Denmark, that triangular commercial enterprise was a huge achievement, involving building forts in Africa. And then this transporting of large numbers of Africans by Portugal, England, Denmark and other European countries, there was an immense amount of displacement and suffering.
The mermaid, based on the statue of the Little Mermaid that stands in Copenhagen harbor, is also a witness or protagonist in the paintings. The Little Mermaid was chosen for her light-hearted innocence, Doane says.
The fanciful series has the iconic mermaid flying on the wings of a pelican over St.Croix in one painting. In another, Peter von Scholten, the Danish Colonial governor in 1848 when St. Croix's slaves successfully demanded freedom, gives the mermaid the Nobel Peace Prize.
Other paintings approach similar subject matter from a different direction.
"One painting, 'Defense,' questions the use of the many forts in the Virgin Islands, whether they were really built primarily to protect against invasion, or to protect themselves from the growing population of unhappy, angry slaves," Doane says.
Like his earlier works, these paintings are acrylic on canvas. Doane began painting watercolors in his early teens. Then he moved to oil, for its bright colors, sharper delineations and raised definition.
"Acrylic is the best of both oil and watercolor," Doane says. "Until it sets, you can treat it like watercolor, but you can raise the texture and use brighter colors. And once it sets, it stays put so you can paint on top without altering what you've done before."
Born during the Depression in Massachusetts in 1930, Doane began painting as a child. Even then he dreamed of becoming an artist and living in the tropics, he says. He served a tour in combat during the Korean War, after which he went to the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, going on to a 10-year career with a New York investment banking firm. He continued to paint, however, and his first invitational exhibit took place in a Georgetown gallery in 1955.
In 1968, Doane discovered St. Croix and, after several trips to the island, he came to live in 1970.
While working in finance, Doane took painting and sculpture classes at Amherst College and worked with other artists. His time on Wall Street exposed him to the New York City gallery scene and its world-class art museums, all of which sharpened his perspective, he says.
He is primarily self-taught, however. He developed his approach by evaluating impressionist, post-impressionist, American modernist and American expressionist abstract painters. He studied works of Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh. When living stateside, Doane made periodic pilgrimages to see "Luncheon After Boating Party," Renoir's masterpiece housed in the Phillips Collection museum in Washington, D.C.
As he developed, Paul Klee and the Bauhaus group invaded his consciousness and Pablo Picasso took root in his mental programming, Doane says. Among the many Doane lists as influences are Jackson Pollack, Milton Avery, David Smith, Jasper Johns and Winslow Homer.
His work may be seen in the classical tradition, but is certainly nuanced by American art and now by African and Caribbean themes, he says.
"The Odyssey of the Little Mermaid" is scheduled for exhibition in February 2009 at the Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts in Frederiksted. If you would like to know more about the artist, his works and how to purchase them, contact Preston Doane by email.
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