By Sana Rose, Contributor 
MOTHER NATURE'S Calm, a small group of paintings by Rheima Scarlett, is currently being hosted by the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of the West Indies (UWI). The collection features images of nature with a touch of human intervention often in the form of buildings. They depict scenes visited by the artist within the past year including gardens and garden-like settings in Cuba, Japan and Jamaica.
Scarlett is known within art education circles and is currently the Sir Alister McIntyre Senior Research Fellow at the Mona School of Business. Her past appointments include principal of the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts and Hillel Academy and external examiner for teachers' colleges. Outside of art, she has served as the manager of the Jamaican swim teams competing in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. All these activities have taken place in a period of over 30 years. Ceramics and photography were added to the list during the 1990s.
The acrylic paintings offered for viewing tend toward Impressionism, finding kinship internationally with the French artist Camille Pisarro and the gardens of Claude Monet. Locally, Albert Huie's landscapes with his Cezannesque compositionally sound structure of blocked-in shapes can offer insight into Scarlett's paintings of Jamaican vistas. Also of note, but from a younger generation of local landscape painters, are Royan Grey and Desmond Morgan, who have been able to portray the distinctive Jamaican flora and fauna bathed in our warm sunlight.
TERRAINS
A number of views of wide, open terrains are presented by Scarlett as well as sections of unpeopled gardens. The impact however, is lost where the illusion of space is concerned. Generally, the forms are flat due to lack of contrast, inconsistent lighting of the images and use of a narrow tonal range. Colours are not luminous green in foliage is only green and light is often interpreted as yellow; the richness of colour is not reflected through the combination of other colours on the palette.
The images combine smoothly blended colours with impasto to add physical dimension to the paintings and only in "Pomegranate" does the artist truly attempt to tackle the challenge of light and form to create a mood for the image. Interestingly, this painting is a close-up of the section of a tree, which suggests that the artist's strength may lie in closely cropped images. Belonging to the observational and representational approach to image-making, this small collection of small to medium-scale works shows the need for greater time to be spent examining forms within nature and recreating these on canvas, a challenging but attainable goal.
The exhibition continues until the end of the month.
