The MBCC Blog

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.

Caribbean in Motion was organized as a partnership between the IDB and the Animae Caribe Caribbean Animation Festival and earlier this year shown at the IDB Cultural Center in Washington, DC. The exhibition highlights some of the most captivating and imaginative animation and illustration in the Caribbean today, including works by Makesi Aquan, Danielle Blaize, Mathew Hudson, Alison Latchman, Anieph Latchman, Wendell McShine, Khia Poitier, Ansar Sattar, Steven Schmid and Marlo Scott. Caribbean in Motion explores the multifaceted social and economic benefits generated by the animation industry, underscoring the importance of nurturing a vibrant creative economy.

Born in 1906 in Poland as Michal Antoni Leszcynski, Lester’s artistic skill was first nurtured by his mother, Eleanor Walter, a painter who had graduated from the St Petersburg Academy. He had been making a name for himself as a painter as early as 1924, when still a seventeen year old student in his first year at the Polish State Nautical College in Gdynia, when a series of his paintings were used by the student body as awards for prizes. After graduating in 1928 with his diploma in Marine Studies, he also spent two semesters at the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts. His naval career led him to the United Kingdom and the Royal Navy, in which he served with pride receiving the Atlantic Star medal, and he later became a naturalized citizen of the United Kingdom. He had some early success as an artist in London,with a solo show at the Wertheim Gallery in 1938and two more at the Dartford Museum and Egan Gallery the following year.