The Marcia Biggs: Impressions of Life exhibition explores the work of the popular Montego Bay-based artist Marcia Biggs, through examples borrowed mainly from private and corporate collections in Western Jamaica.
Marcia Biggs was born in 1960 in Montego Bay, where she was based for most of her life. She was trained at the Mico Teachers’ College, and she was tutored by Cecil Cooper and served as an apprentice with Barrington Watson.She taught art at the Herbert Morrison High School from 1983 to 1987, after which she became a full-time artist.She participated in several of the National Gallery of Jamaica’s Annual National exhibitions and had noted solo exhibitions at the Bay Gallery in Montego Bay and the Bolivar Gallery in Kingston. Marcia Biggs was also a long-standing member of the Western Jamaica Society of Fine Arts.
Marcia Biggs—or Biggs, as she was affectionately known—died unexpectedly at age 38 in 1998 but left behind a significant and diverse body of realist oil paintings, watercolours and drawings. Most of her subjects were fairly conventional, and included garden scenes and flowers, architectural details, landscapes, still lifes, and portraits—many of them inspired by the Montego Bay environment—but she also produced more daring male and female nudes and erotica. While she was a technically proficient oil painter and watercolourist, Biggs’ drawing skills were truly exceptional, especially when applied to the human form.
