Errol Lloyd

Errol Lloyd (born 1943)[1] is a Jamaican-born artist, writer, art critic, editor and arts administrator. Since the 1960s he has been based in London, UK, where he originally travelled to study law. Now well known as a book illustrator, he was runner-up for the Kate Greenaway Medal in 1973 for his work on My Brother Sean by Petronella Breinburg.[2] Becoming involved with the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM) in 1966, he went on to produce book jackets, greetings cards and other material for the London black-owned publishing companies, New Beacon Books, Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications,[3][4] and Allison and Busby.[5][6] Lloyd also had a long association with the Minorities' Arts Advisory Service (MAAS), whose magazine, Artrage, he edited for a while.[1] He is recognised for having done much pioneering work for black art, beginning in the 1960s, when he was one of the few artists "who consciously chose to create Black images".[7]

Errol Lloyd
Born1943
Lucea, Jamaica
OccupationArtist, writer, art critic, arts administrator

Eddie Chambers has written of him: "Gifted with an ability to capture likenesses in a range of creative and engaging ways, Lloyd has been responsible for a number of portrait commissions of leading Black and Caribbean males who have excelled in their respective fields over the course of the twentieth century", among them C. L. R. James, Sir Alexander Bustamante, Sir Garfield Sobers and Lord Pitt.[8]

Life and career

Born in Lucea, Jamaica,[9] Errol Lloyd was schooled at Munro College in Saint Elizabeth Parish, where he excelled at sports and was an outstanding footballer (described in his schooldays in the early '60s as being like "a Rolls Royce in a used car lot").[10][11] He travelled to Britain in 1963, aged 20, to study at the Council of Legal Education with the intention of becoming a lawyer, but that ambition was superseded by his interest in art (he did not complete his legal studies until 1974), although he undertook no formal training in that field: "I was self-taught and worked in isolation until I was introduced to [the] Caribbean Artists Movement.... I met older artists like the sculptor Ron Moody and they acted like role models for me. From there my work developed."[12] In 1967, he sculpted a bust of C. L. R. James and, having joined the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM), took part in CAM's art exhibition at the University of Kent.[13] He has said: "I was self-taught and worked in isolation until I was introduced to Caribbean Artists Movement.... I met older artists like the sculptor Ron Moody and they acted like role models for me. From there my work developed."[14] While still a student he began to receive commissions to make bronze busts; his subjects have included the Jamaican prime minister Sir Alexander Bustamante, politician Lord Pitt, cricketer Sir Garfield Sobers, and cultural figures including John La Rose, Linton Kwesi Johnson and others.[15]

Lloyd regularly provided artwork for books published by Bogle-L'Ouverture and New Beacon Books, as well as having his paintings featured on greetings cards.[15][16][17][18] In 1969, he was responsible for the cover of Bogle-L'Ouverture's first title, Walter Rodney's The Groundings with my Brothers, as well as their next title and others over the years.[19] In 1971 he designed the cover for Bernard Coard's How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Sub-Normal in the British School System, published by New Beacon.[4] In addition Lloyd worked for mainstream publishers such as Random House, Penguin Books and Oxford University Press. His success as an illustrator began with the children's book My Brother Sean by Petronella Breinburg (Bodley Head, 1973), for which he was Highly Commended for the Kate Greenaway Medal; My Brother Sean was the first picture book by a mainstream UK publisher to feature black children aimed at the UK market.[20] Other accolades followed during his career, including when his 1995 novel for teenagers, Many Rivers to Cross, won the Youth Library Group award[15] and was nominated for a Carnegie Medal.[21]

Alongside creating his own work, Lloyd has demonstrated a consistent concern for the general advancement of Black visual arts in Britain, promoting, supporting and celebrating other artists including such notables as Ronald Moody and Aubrey Williams.[1][22] Lloyd was artist-in-residence at the Keskidee Centre from its early days and was involved with some of the productions staged there by such playwrights as Rufus Collins.[9] He also had a long association with the Minorities' Arts Advisory Service (MAAS), which aimed "to promote ethnic identity and preserve cultural traditions",[23] in the course of which he did service as an editor of the MAAS journal Artrage (published from 1980 for some 15 years).[24] He was a member of an initiative set up in 1978 called the Rainbow Art Group, which mounted several exhibitions.[25]

He was formerly a teacher for Advanced Painting at the Camden Arts Centre,[15] and also served on the Visual Arts Panel for Arts Council England.[15] He is also known as a musician, playwright and storyteller.[26][27][28]

Lloyd is the subject of a photograph in the National Portrait Gallery, London, by Horace Ové.[21] He also features in Ové's film about John La Rose, Dream to Change the World.[1]

In 2012, Lloyd gave the keynote address on "Arts and Activism, Culture and Resistance" at the Annual Huntley Conference at London Metropolitan Archives.[5]

Exhibitions

Errol Lloyd has over the years participated in many significant exhibitions in the UK.[29] In 1997 he featured in Transforming the Crown: African, Asian and Caribbean Artists in Britain, 1966–1996 — a historical exhibition in three New York City venues: the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Bronx Museum of the Arts and the Caribbean Cultural Center – representing the Caribbean Artists Movement along with Winston Branch, Althea McNish, Aubrey Williams and Ronald Moody.[30] The most recent exhibition to show his work is No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960–1990, at the Guildhall Art Gallery (10 July 2015 – 24 January 2016),[31] as part of which he was in conversation with Eddie Chambers on 13 July 2015, discussing "the impact made by notable Black Artists in the late 20th Century, who have gone largely unnoticed in the British Art Arena".[32]

Selected exhibitions
  • Caribbean Artists in England. Commonwealth Institute, London, 22 January–14 February 1971.
  • Afro-Caribbean Art. Artists Market, London, 27 April–25 May 1978. Group exhibition organised by Drum Arts Centre.[33]
  • Errol Lloyd (solo exhibition of paintings), Kingston (Jamaica). Jamaican High Commission. 19 May–19 June 1978.
  • Creation for Liberation: 2nd Open Exhibition By Black Artists. Brixton Art Gallery, London, 17 July–8 August 1984.
  • Creation for Liberation. Third Annual Creation for Liberation Open Exhibition: Art by Black Artists. GLC Brixton Recreation Centre, London, 1985.
  • Caribbean Expressions in Britain. Leicestershire Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester, UK. 16 August–28 September 1986.
  • Black Art: Plotting the Course. Touring exhibition, 1988.
  • Caribbean Connection. Islington Arts Factory, London, 15 September–13 October 1995.[34]
  • Caribbean Connection 2: Island Pulse. Islington Arts Factory, London, 1996.
  • Transforming the Crown: African, Asian & Caribbean Artists in Britain, 1966–1996. Caribbean Cultural Center, Studio Museum in Harlem, and Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York City, 1997.
  • No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960–1990. Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London, 10 July 2015 – 24 January 2016.[35]

References
  1. "Errol Lloyd. Born 1943 in Jamaica", Diaspora Artists.
  2. Cherrell Shelley Robinson, "Children's Literature (Caribbean)", in Eugene Benson and L. W. Conolly (eds), Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English (1994), Routledge, 2nd edition 2005, p. 233.
  3. "Framing Black Visual Arts Event", No Colour Bar blog, 4 August 2015.
  4. "The Sharp Edge of Hope: John LaRose and Children", theracetoread | Children's Literature and Issues of Race.
  5. Margaret Andrews, Doing Nothing is Not An Option: The Radical Lives of Eric & Jessica Huntley, Middlesex, England: Krik Krak, 2014, p. 161. ISBN 978-1-908415-02-8.
  6. "Caribbean Artist Movement:Life Lessons", Get Up, Stand Up Now Blog, Somerset House, 4 July 2019.
  7. Eddie Chambers quoting from "The ArtPack: A History of Black Artists in Britain (1988)", published and produced by Eddie Chambers and Tam Joseph, with financial support from Haringey Arts Council, London.
  8. Eddie Chambers, Black Artists in British Art: A History from 1950 to the Present, I.B. Tauris, 2014, p. 72.
  9. "King's Cross", KXV-2006-206-01: Errol Lloyd interview. Soundcloud.
  10. "Tribute to Gerry German from Errol Lloyd", George Padmore Institute.
  11. Q3210, "March Winds", Jamaicans.com, 6 April 2003.
  12. Angela Cobbinah, "Caribbean Artists Movement Retrospective", 25 October 2007. Reprinted from "A Caribbean hothouse for the arts in a cold climate", Camden New Journal, 25 October 2007.
  13. Pauline de Souza, "Lloyd, Errol", in Alison Donnell (ed.), Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture, Routledge, 2013, p. 183.
  14. Angela Cobbinah, "A Caribbean hothouse for the arts in a cold climate", Camden New Journal Review, 25 October 2007.
  15. "Framing Black Visual Arts Event" (Eddie Chambers and Errol Lloyd in conversation with Sonia Dyer), No Colour Bar website, 4 August 2015.
  16. "Building the catalogue of a 'publishing maisonette'", George Padmore Institute.
  17. Andrews (2014), p. 131.
  18. Angela Cobbinah, "No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960–1990" Archived 23 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine, Camden Review, 16 July 2015.
  19. Andrews (2014), pp. 118, 121.
  20. Errol Lloyd (January 2019), "My time with children's literature", Breaking New Ground: Celebrating British Writers & Illustrators of Colour, Speaking Volumes, pp. 14–.
  21. "Errol Lloyd (1943–), Artist and playwright", National Portrait Gallery.
  22. Chambers (2014), Black Artists in British Art, pp. 51, 69.
  23. Pauline De Souza, "Minorities' Arts Advisory Service", in Alison Donnell (ed.), Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture, Routledge, 2013, p. 201.
  24. Chambers (2014), Black Artists in British Art, p. 71.
  25. "Rainbow Art Group", Diaspora Artists.
  26. Linton Kwesi Johnson, "About the George Padmore Institute", LKJ Records, 17 December 2008.
  27. "Sugar and Spice – Stories, cartoons, poems & music – Faustin Charles and Errol Lloyd", Settle Storytelling Festival, 12 October 2012.
  28. "2014 Selection Committee Members", Alfred Fagon Awards.
  29. "Lloyd, Errol (b. Jamaica, West Indies; active UK, 1998)" African American Visual Artists Database (AAVAD).
  30. Holland Cotter, "ART REVIEW; This Realm of Newcomers, This England", The New York Times, 24 October 1997.
  31. "Exhibition: No Colour Bar" Archived 5 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine, City of London.
  32. "Framing Black Visual Art – Meet Eddie Chambers and Errol Lloyd", Artlyst.
  33. Reviews: Rasheed Araeen, "Afro-Caribbean Art", Black Phoenix 2 (Summer 1978):30–31; Emmanuel Cooper, "In View", 13, no. 3 (Issue 148), July 1978:50. Cited by Eddie Chambers, "Black Artists in Europe", Critical Interventions 12 (Fall 2013):5.
  34. "The Caribbean Connection", catalogue. Diaspora Artists.
  35. "No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960–1990" Archived 2 August 2015 at the Wayback Machine. The Radical Lives of Eric & Jessica Huntley website.

Further reading
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