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che lovelace

@chelovelace

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artist/surfer
@friendsfortheroad / Represented by: @vsf LA, Seoul & Dallas, @nicolavassellgallery New York and @corvimora London

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Another trip around the sun for me 🙌🏾
The year runs quickly …
Carnival to Carnival…just like that.

I give ultimate thanks to be living a creative life…✨
whatever I can give of myself—to my family, my friends, my community, and my world—that is the gift.
I hope I’ll be granted the strength and time to keep offering for many, many years to come.
With gratitude.🙏🏽

#birthdayvibes
#cancerian by @chelovelace

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a month ago

‘Birds in Flight’ 2024,
currently part of the group exhibition ‘Follow Through’ at the Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York until August 7th.
@nicolavassellgallery by @chelovelace

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a month ago

Currently on view here in Port of Spain, a small collection of paintings made over 20 years ago in 2005.
Mostly Blue Devils in action …as well as an early favorite of mine, calypsonian Lord Nelson mid dance .
The exhibition runs until 6th June at @yartgallerytt
Do check it out.✨

photo: @brendandelzin by @chelovelace

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2 months ago

My 2022 painting ‘The Gun’ (which was part of the solo exhibition ‘Bathers’ 2023 at Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York and) which was acquired by the Canadian museum The Art Gallery of Ontario is currently on view in the presentation,
Critical Views: Recent Acquisitions by the Department of Arts of Global Africa & the Diaspora, on Level 2 of the AGO.

The painting draws attention to the spiritual significance of water and the sacred and practical importance it holds within Trinidadian culture.

Che Lovelace. The Gun, 2022. Acrylic and dry pigment on four board panels mounted to single wooden subframe, Overall: 150.2 × 130.8 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario. Purchase, with funds from Friends of Global Africa & the Diaspora, Simon Nixon, and the Mitzi & Warren Eisenberg Foundation, 2023. © Che Lovelace. Courtesy of the artist and Nicola Vassell Gallery. 2023/22.

@agotoronto
@nicolavassellgallery by @chelovelace

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2 months ago

OPENING TOMORROW
10am - 2pm

Artist Collection Che Lovelace

“2005
These paintings come from a moment of shift.

Made in 2005, they follow my move to the Caribbean Contemporary Arts building (CCA7) at the Fernandes Industrial Estate, where a small but vital community of artists was forming—Jasmine Girvan, Embah, Peter Doig, Tessa Alexander, Chris Ofili, Rachel Rochford, alongside a steady flow of visiting artists moving through the residency programme. The energy of that shared space—conversation, proximity, the quiet exchange of looking—began to alter my approach.

The work became quicker, more gestural. I found myself reaching toward the fleeting presence of steelband players, Blue Devils, calypsonians—not as fixed images, but as movement, as feeling. After an earlier period of dense colour and layered surfaces, I began to strip things back, searching for something more elemental: a gesture, a stance, a figure just on the edge of becoming. There was a desire to get closer—to meet the subject in a direct and urgent way.

The palette narrowed—blue, pink, ochre yellow, white, black, red—still painting with oils at this point. It was also here that I began working on the grey archival boards that continue in the work today. The surface held a balance of absorption and resistance, allowing paint to stain, settle, and gather in different ways.

Looking back, the paintings made between 2005 and 2008 feel like an opening that drew me further into the themes and subjects I had long wanted to explore more deeply. They carry the beginnings of a language that would later expand into the larger, figure-oriented, multi-panel works that emerged around 2010—creating a direct line to where my work stands today.

The connection is quiet, but continuous—held in the attempt to locate something living within the image.”

Che Lovelace
May 2026

Image:
Performer
2005
Oil on board
29 ¾ x 35 inches
75.6 x 63.5 cm

#yartgallery #artistcollection #chelovelace #trinidad #caribbeanart by @chelovelace

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3 months ago

The body bends… but does not break. The dancer passes through.
I am close to completing this painting — years in the making, with as many twists and turns as the subject itself. A limbo dancer, steel pan players, a performer leaping high above.

I’ve long been drawn to the deeper meaning of the limbo — especially after reading the Barbadian poet and academic Edward Kamau Brathwaite’s thoughts around it. He suggests that the dancer’s arched, constrained body echoes the cramped, contorted positioning of bodies below deck. And yet the limbo doesn’t represent suffering — it transforms it.

Rooted in African cosmologies and reinterpreted through the Caribbean experience, the limbo can be understood as a rite of passage. The movement under the bar — passing through a threshold, emerging again.

What evolved into something playful and competitive is also, quietly, defiant.
There is something deeply Caribbean in that: taking a history of constraint and turning it into performance, into style, into a way of moving through resistance without losing form.

#steelband
#limbo by @chelovelace

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3 months ago

I’m honoured to be nominated for an A+C Award (Art + Christianity Awards) based in the UK.
These awards focus on Art in a religious / spiritual context (especially within places of worship)

I am nominated in the permanent commissions category for my 4 part painting now installed at St James Church Piccadilly, London.

The work celebrates and honors the baptism of the abolitionist Ottobah Cugoano, at that very church in 1772.

Thank you to the Art + Christianity community for recognising this and other other artworks that live in public and sacred spaces.

@art_xianity
@stjpiccadilly
@corvimora by @chelovelace

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3 months ago

Sharing some optimistic news…
The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge UK has acquired my painting,
“Imagined Space With Abandoned Warehouse” (2025), which was exhibited last year at
Corvi-Mora Gallery, London @corvimora

It also feels meaningful to note that Trinidadian scholar Marsha Pearce @drmarshapearce was awarded a Global Professorship by the British Academy in 2025, and is now working with Cambridge University and the Fitzwilliam Museum on her research project, “Trembling Abode: Reimagining the Museum as Home for Global Majority Artists.”
Her work continues to rethink how museums function—questioning representation, power, and belonging within these spaces.

Little by little… one step at a time. 🙏🏽

“Imagined Space With Abandoned Warehouse” (2025) 25 × 29 in Acrylic and dry pigment on board panel
@fitzmuseum_uk by @chelovelace

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4 months ago

Painting again 🙏🏽
working on this Limbo Dancer…
more later✨ by @chelovelace

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4 months ago

Funeral service for my mother …
Saturday 21th 2026 3pm. 🙏🏽❤️ by @chelovelace

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5 months ago

My dear, beloved mother, Jean, passed away from pancreatic cancer on Carnival Monday night.

She stayed with us just long enough to see me through another J’Ouvert morning… perhaps sending her blessings and good energy as we lifted our spirits on that life-affirming dawn.
Now she rests—and remains an angel to us always.

I am still processing this. Needless to say, she will be deeply missed. She was my greatest supporter and fiercest defender—the source of so much light and blessing in my life.

Through all the ups and downs of the years, I choose to remember her as she so often was: ready for a good laugh, fiercely independent yet tender at heart, happiest among her plants and dogs and alongside her beloved partner, Peter.

I can only hope that she now resides in the place she always imagined—peaceful, beautiful, connected to nature and to all the things that made her heart happiest. It is the space she has always deserved.

Love Always
Until we meet again, Mama. 🤍 by @chelovelace

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5 months ago

As 2025 closes, just recapping a significant moment for me this year… being granted the French National award, Ordre des Arts et des Lettres - Chevalier (The Order of Arts and Letters-Knight) during a heartwarming ceremony conducted by French Ambassador Didier Chabert at the Ambassador’s residence, surrounded by friends and family.

May 2026 bring us all a little closer through our shared love of art and creativity.✨✨

…. and in honor of those we have lost this year, we who will remain vow to put our best foot forward 🙌🏽 by @chelovelace

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7 months ago