dready art ‘Moko Jumbies’ – 35×50 – original on canvas

is carnival time again, one after the other up and down the islands carnival, jump up, road march, soca music, costumes and stilted walkers known as ‘moko jumbies’ …

I haven’t seen the big carnivals of trinidad, rio, new orleans or even venice – have never done road march in costume …

have only seen smaller ones of jamaica, cayman and belize; rode on the back of a ‘big truck’ in belize where a band I was with was playing …

love to walk the route, see the people, interact, hang, dance, go to the street parties – whether you go or not, carnival permeates the scene, you get affected by it, the new music of the season begins to crop up, the carnival hits of the mas players bands come on the radio, photos of the costumes flitter across social media … in trinidad everything shut down for a week, in jamaica people start to talk about Mas camps, my daughter wants to go to mas camp party ….

and so, I wanted to throw every carnival into the hat on this one …

get behind the big truck … high walk, shadow, butterfly, waaaaaave

And then it got chosen, this dready, to represent cayman islands at Carifesta 2017, in Barbados … and it came with me to the Mourant Ozanne show at the oxo tower in london …

life is good …