As 'Life Between Islands' opens at Tate Britain, two painters reflect on the importance of place to their work.
Amy Sherlock: What does ‘the Caribbean’ mean to you?
Hurvin Anderson: In a strange way, for me, the Caribbean is a place I don’t know, but have learned about through conversation. I haven’t lived there, but I know it because of family stories. That’s maybe the reason I’m interested in the Caribbean landscape – because I grew up hearing so much about it. My first experience of Jamaica was in 1979, when I was 14 years old. I come from a family of eight, but I was the only one to be born in the UK. There was a difference between British-born diasporic Jamaicans and Jamaicans, and it always intrigued me what that thing was. Our home felt like a Caribbean home but then, when I stepped out the front door, I was in Britain. With the paintings, I’m trying to get at where these things overlap or clash. Where they meet or don’t meet.
Peter Doig: How ‘Caribbean’ do you think your work was, Hurvin, before you went back as a grown man, in 2002, to do a residency in Trinidad?
