Donald Locke

Donald Cuthbert Locke (17 September 1930 – 6 December 2010) was a Guyanese artist who created drawings, paintings and sculptures in a variety of media. He studied in the United Kingdom, and worked in Guyana and the United Kingdom before moving to the United States in 1979. He spent his last twenty years, perhaps the most productive and innovative period of his life, in Atlanta, Georgia. His eldest son is British sculptor Hew Locke.

Biography

Birth and early education

Donald Locke was born on 17 September 1930 in Stewartville, Demerara County, Guyana. His father, also called Donald Locke, was a skilled carpenter who made furniture and his mother, Ivy Mae (née Harper), was a primary school teacher. The family moved to Georgetown in 1938, where Locke attended the Bourda Roman Catholic School and then the Smith's Church Congregational School. He went on to the Progressive High School, graduating in 1946. He was accepted as a student at the Broad Street Government School, where he became increasingly interested in drawing.

In 1947, Locke attended a Working People's Art Class (WPAC) taught in Georgetown by local artist Edward Rupert Burrowes. This inspired him to take up painting. He did not have normal potter's equipment, but was able to make and successfully fire large earthenware pots using an improvised kiln. In 1959 the Guyanese government gave him a grant to study for a master's degree in fine arts at Edinburgh College of Art, a school in the University of Edinburgh. There he met the artists Dave Cohen, Sheldon Kaganof and Dion Myers, who introduced the ideas of the California Clay Movement to Britain. For many years Locke's work reflected their influence.

In 1962, Locke obtained a grant from Edinburgh University to go to Florence and Ravenna, where he undertook historical research He completed his graduate thesis in 1964 and returned to Georgetown to take up a position as Art Master at Queen's College, where he taught from 1964 until 1970. He began painting due to lack of facilities for pottery. In 1969, he obtained a British Council bursary that let him take leave from Queen's College and return to the Edinburgh College of Art for research in ceramic techniques. In 1970, after a trip to Brazil sponsored by the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he resigned from Queen's College and moved to London, where he obtained work teaching ceramics. His work began to incorporate materials such as metal, wood, leather, fur and ceramics. He gained a growing recognition for his ceramic work, and in 1972 was invited to exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum in the International Exhibition of Ceramics.

United States

Locke visited the United States for the first time in 1976, as guest artist at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Montville, Maine. In 1999, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Sculpture, and for a year was an artist in residence at Arizona State University. His first of many bronze sculptures were cast by the Arizona Bronze Foundry in 1980. He divorced Leila in the late 1970s, and obtained permanent residency status in the United States, marrying Art Consultant Brenda Stephenson in 1981. In 1983 he moved to Phoenix, Arizona. Locke lived in the southwest of the United States for 11 years. During this period he was the Arizona correspondent for Artspace magazine, for which he wrote a series of articles. He also wrote for the Phoenix New Times and for Arts Magazine. A reviewer commenting on his work Trophies of Empire 1, 1972–1974 said it "comprise robust disconnected forms that eerily echo the cultures and geographies he had experienced. Heavy metal vessels, solid wood forms and found objects are placed together creating awkward human effigies or challenging abstract assemblages. Their loaded erotic and sometimes violent symbolism bring to mind mournful memories from the past and issues related to slavery, identity and sovereignty. His are sombre images of the Black Atlantic world that Locke straddled so boldly."

Exhibitions

Locke was Guyana's representative at the 12th São Paulo Art Biennial in 1971. He exhibited his Two Sculptures from a Ritual Fertility Suite in Hungary in 1975 at the International Biennale of Sculpture. In 1976 he had his own show at the Roundhouse in London, and in 1977 his work was displayed in Nigeria at FESTAC. His Trophies of Empire was first displayed at the Afro-Caribbean Art Exhibition in 1978, and was shown again at London's Hayward Gallery in 1989 in The Other Story, an influential show that helped to increase public awareness of the quality of work of Asian, African and Caribbean artists, and also featured other Caribbean artists such as Aubrey Williams and Ronald Moody, as well the paintings of Black British artists including Sonia Boyce. The art critic Brian Sewell said that Locke's sculptures in The Other Story showed exquisite mastery and extraordinary ingenuity.

In 1994 Locke went to Ecuador, where his work was shown in the exhibition Current Identities at the Cuenca Bienal of Painting, along with the work of other artists including Whitfield Lovell, Philemona Williamson, Emilio Cruz and Freddy Rodríguez. A 2002 exhibition at the Solomon Projects gallery in Atlanta featured rough wax sculptures that represented the sacred symbols of Locke's Guyanese creole heritage. In 2009 an exhibition of about fifty of his recent sculptures and paintings named Pork Knocker Dreams was staged in England. "Porkknocker" is the name given to gold prospectors in Guyana: Locke's father had prospected as a young man.

Locke exhibited in many other group and solo shows, including in São Paulo, Brazil; Medellín, Colombia; Budapest, Hungary; Faenza, Italy; Victoria and Albert Museum and Whitechapel Gallery in London, United Kingdom; Nottingham, United Kingdom; Aljira Center for Contemporary Art in Newark, New Jersey; Nexus Biennial and the Master Artist Series, Atlanta, Georgia; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. His gallery shows included Nexus and City Gallery East in Atlanta and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, Arizona.

Group exhibitions A partial list of group exhibitions: