My name is Sandra Weekes and I’m a backdrop painter. By way of hobby.
I moved from St John but moved back. I always knew I’d return to the parish of my birth.
The air of St John is special. We get a wonderfully cool breeze coming off the Atlantic. Early in the morning, getting up at 5 o’clock , opening up the house, the jalousie flaps to the front, and feeling that fresh breeze pass through the house.
You know you’re approaching the parish of St John long before you see the sign. It’s in your blood.
I’m a tree lover. They keep the island cool. They’re majestic, wonderful to behold. They’re divine to me.
Barbados lost its forests to sugar cane but now sugar is on its way out and construction is on its way in.
Developers are building more and more homes but not thinking about developing the landscape. They’re not thinking of a place where trees are part of the lifestyle.
Trees represent, the people but real estate developers cut down trees. Maybe they can get creative and make concrete tree homes.
I have four brothers. I don’t have a family myself. I have more than enough nieces, nephews and godchildren.
There were Enid Blyton books – Mallory Towers, The Naughtiest Girl Is A Monitor. Entering St Winifred’s in the early Seventies was like entering a school from the books I’d read.
The list of items we were supposed to have – a hat, a blazer, a raincoat – not that we got them, but the list reminded me of Enid Blyton book schools.
I believe it’s now amalgamated but in my day it was an all-girls school. What was fun was the interest we did get from boys from Harrison College or Lodge coming to school to pick up younger sisters.
If I weren’t a human being, I would be a tree. If not a tree, an orca whale.
The orca is between the haunting beauty of the majestic blue whale and the playfulness of the dolphin. He’s a toothed whale, very much predatory, but also playful. They’re pack animals; they mate for life.
Everybody wants to be a bird. I don’t mind the idea of soaring but when your wings get clipped it could be awful. Before a bird, I would be the ant.
I used to have a challenge with beggars. But I will not judge anyone’s suffering. Out of suffering comes another level of growth. Maybe that’s their choice as spiritual beings inhabiting earthly bodies. Maybe that’s the aspect of humanness they choose to experience.
There’s a concept that human beings are like a virus spreading over the Earth.
We’re like children. We don’t see the big picture of our actions. If we don’t take care, there’ll come a time when the planet will just dust us off.
St Winifred’s held a pantomime every year and I started off assisting painting backdrops in my teens. But now I do big ones. I can’t remember my exact first one but it was a good 20 years ago. Maybe not 20 years.
Normally the director will give me the theme of the show. I go off, do my sketches. If they’re approved, I proceed to implement.
With big backdrops, I draw a small sketch, roughly to scale, and then project the image onto the backdrop using transparencies, slides, whatever equipment is available. I then put onto the backdrop the major lines of the sketch. I do a very skeletal sketch, try not to impose my ideas on the team.
There have been times when I’ve done the bulk of the painting but mostly we have assistants.
The volunteers usually get whittled down to two or three who are consistent. We bounce ideas back and forth. The backdrops evolve as we go along.
I have great admiration for the masters of old who climbed up scaffolding and painted ceilings upside down. I am afraid of heights. If I go up a high monument, I have to have railings all around me.
But, funny, I don’t have a problem going up scaffolding or a ladder to paint backdrops. It must be that special wand, the paintbrush, in my hand.
You may have one person who is very good at leaf work. Or stone work. I love that. It’s a team project and everyone has to have input.
You really have to have a passion to paint a backdrop. You can’t be intimidated by the size of it. I’d rather work with people who are passionate than people who get too technical.
With large backdrops, we paint every Saturday and Sunday, six or nine hours painting. It takes about three weekends to complete a big one.
The most satisfying thing about the job is working with my team, seeing how they interpret an aspect of the backdrop. I get very excited when somebody paints my line drawing and it comes alive in a way I didn’t conceptualise.
If there was anything negative about the job, it would have to be the inconsistency in commitment. Once you put a hand on the backdrop, you should stay with it. If you have four or five changes in people working on an aspect of the backdrop, it shows.
A Bajan is a mixture of so many things, so many other people. Whether it be European and African, Indian. And a Bajan is food. Breadfruit, cou-cou. All of that and so much more.
Barbados means home to me. Barbadians are in love with the Rock. And it’s a comfortable rock, so I think people seek out that comfort, no matter how far they travel. They want to return to that comfort.
