Artist Terryl Godoy and his summer art winning piece Man At Work 2012 depicting an old time street scene.
Hot and dry weather is the state of the clime in Belize often with not much happening on the art scene in June. But the Bowen and Bowen conglomerate celebrated 50 years as the country’s Coke bottler with an art competition. The theme revolves around its product and 25 schools and 25 professional artists participated. The paintings all have an element of the soft drink somewhere making it a sort of ketchy exercise in art. But the established artists such as Carolyn Carr who won third prize, and Terryly Godoy first prize winner, made an impression by making the soft drink a subtle component of their art pieces. The prize awards and exhibition launch were held at the House Of Culture in Belize City on 8 May.
Terryl is well known as a street artist and musician and he explains his winning painting Man At Work 2012:
“It really caught me as a surprise. I had not a clue that I would have been the winner for this competition. I’m very, very grateful for this. Sometimes I think that the music would take away from painting but today it shows that painting stands for itself and the music.
“I came here to play music for this function, I did not come here to collect a check or anything, I never thought about that. We have a little lady on the top and she’s hanging out clothes but she has a Coke in her hand and she has her mangoes downstairs to sell. Then you have this guy that comes with a wooden cart. In those days they made their own cart with the type of wheel from an old piece of lumber they cut and put rubber from a discarded tire on. If you notice he has a drum with water and he is filling up the drum to take back to his village but he also has his cases of soft drinks. And a little girl is putting a letter in one of those old colonial mail post boxes you used to see around our cCity in the old days. ”