1. Donald Cuthbert Locke was a Guyanese artist who created drawings, paintings and sculptures in a variety of media.
36 Facts About Donald Locke
1. 2.
Donald Locke studied in the United Kingdom, and worked in Guyana and the United Kingdom before moving to the United States in 1979.
3.
Donald Locke spent his last twenty years, perhaps the most productive and innovative period of his life, in Atlanta, Georgia.
4.
Donald Locke was born on 17 September 1930 in Stewartville, Demerara County, Guyana.
5.
Donald Locke's father, called Donald Locke, was a skilled carpenter who made furniture and his mother, Ivy Mae, was a primary school teacher.
6.
The family moved to Georgetown in 1938, where Locke attended the Bourda Roman Catholic School and then the Smith's Church Congregational School.
7.
Donald Locke went on to the Progressive High School, graduating in 1946.
8.
Donald Locke was accepted as a student at the Broad Street Government School, where he became increasingly interested in drawing.
9.
In 1947 Donald Locke attended a Working People's Art Class taught in Georgetown by the local artist Edward Rupert Burrowes.
10.
Donald Locke became a regular contributor to the annual WPAC exhibitions, and for a while was secretary of WPAC, helping to organise exhibitions in different locations.
11.
Donald Locke was given a British Council art scholarship in 1954, the last such scholarship to be awarded in Guyana in this period, with which he was able to study ceramics at the Bath School of Art and Design at Corsham, England.
12.
Donald Locke was taught painting by William Scott and Bryan Wynter, pottery by James Tower and sculpture by Ken Armitage and Bernard Meadows.
13.
Donald Locke graduated in 1957 with a Teaching Certificate in Art Education.
14.
Donald Locke did not have normal potter's equipment, but was able to make and successfully fire large earthenware pots using an improvised kiln.
15.
In 1962 Donald 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.
16.
Donald Locke began painting due to lack of facilities for pottery.
17.
Donald Locke's work began to incorporate materials such as metal, wood, leather, fur and ceramics.
18.
Donald Locke 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.
19.
Donald Locke visited the United States for the first time in 1976, as guest artist at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Montville, Maine.
20.
Donald Locke divorced Leila in the late 1970s, and obtained permanent residency status in the United States, marrying Art Consultant Brenda Stephenson in 1981.
21.
Donald Locke lived in the southwest of the United States for 11 years.
22.
Donald Locke wrote for the Phoenix New Times and for Arts Magazine.
23.
Donald Locke's paintings combined heavy paint, photographs, cloth, wood, metal and found objects mounted on canvas.
24.
Donald Locke taught part-time at Georgia State University and at the Atlanta College of Art, retiring from teaching in 1996.
25.
Donald Locke contributed a weekly review to this paper for three years.
26.
Donald Locke lived in Atlanta for the remainder of his life, with growing recognition from exhibitions of his work in the US and Europe.
27.
An outgoing person, with a generous character, Donald Locke enjoyed entertaining people at dinners where he did all the cooking.
28.
Donald Locke loved to talk about art, and was an interesting and engaging speaker.
29.
Donald Locke died at home in Atlanta on 6 December 2010.
30.
Donald Locke was survived by three children from his marriage with the artist Leila Locke: Corinne, Jonathan and Hew.
31.
Donald Locke came into his own as a unique individual in Atlanta under the influence of local folk artists such as Thornton Dial.
32.
Donald Locke's are sombre images of the Black Atlantic world that Locke straddled so boldly.
33.
Donald Locke was Guyana's representative at the 12th Sao Paulo Art Biennial in 1971.
34.
Donald Locke exhibited his Two Sculptures from a Ritual Fertility Suite in Hungary in 1975 at the International Biennale of Sculpture.
35.
In 1994 Donald 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 Rodriguez.
36.
Donald Locke exhibited in many other group and solo shows, including in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Medellin, 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.