Llewellyn Xavier
b. 1945, Saint Lucia
At the age of seventeen, Llewellyn Xavier left Saint Lucia for Barbados, where he was first introduced to watercolors while working as an agricultural apprentice. In 1968, Xavier traveled to England and became a pioneer in the field of mail art. He moved to the United States in 1979 to attend the school of the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston. He later joined a monastery in Montreal to become a Cistercian monk for some time, before leaving the monastery, marrying, and returning to Saint Lucia in 1987. Xavier created perhaps his most important works in 1993, titled Global Council for Restoration of the Earth’s Environment. The series of large collages, first shown at the Patrick Cramer Gallery in Geneva, incorporate all manner of recycled materials, including naturalist prints from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and postage stamps from many countries. They also include signatures of various world leaders of environmentalism and of a number of conservationists. Xavier is well known for his oil paintings, characterized by multicolored drops of paint applied to the canvas using a series of special tools. Looking at his paintings, it is clear that Xavier looks at the Caribbean, his homeland, as a source of inspiration for his use of color and light. His work often reflects his love for the environment. Xavier describes his latest exhibition as "the result of fifty years of observing the behavior of paint, the juxtaposition of colors in close proximity to one other, creating texture and attempting to understand the paradox of form"
Llewellyn Xavier was awarded the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, OBE, by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace in 2004. His work is held in the Permanent Collections of The Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., the Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, The Ulster Museum, Northern Ireland, The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto amongst others.