At 21, Felisha’s painting a new path with Canvas Café

AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

No mat­ter the mood or the weight of the day, art of­fers a way to ex­press what words some­times can­not. Paired with your favourite drink in hand, it can be­come a gen­tle form of heal­ing—a truth un­der­stood by busi­ness own­er Fe­l­isha Mo­hammed.

At 21 years old, Fe­l­isha is the own­er of Can­vas Café, lo­cat­ed on Old Tim Road in St Au­gus­tine.

As sip-and-paint events con­tin­ue to grow in pop­u­lar­i­ty across the world for friend groups, busi­ness­es and artists, Fe­l­isha has carved out a space where the ex­pe­ri­ence is no longer an oc­ca­sion­al pop-up event, but a more reg­u­lar­ly ac­ces­si­ble ac­tiv­i­ty.

“What I would do is go to dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions and host sip-and-paint events, but what was the strug­gle for me was find­ing a lo­ca­tion to do it. And this was al­ways a long-term dream for me to have my own space to host my events,” Fe­l­isha told Guardian Me­dia.

This is, in­stead, a ser­vice of­fered through­out the week, just like at any din­ing spot. The con­cept is sim­ple: ar­rive, or­der your favourite drink (whether it is cof­fee, a lat­te or matcha) and pas­try, and se­lect the art piece you would like to cre­ate. From colour­ing books and coloured pen­cils to mi­cron pens, paints, easels, palettes and can­vas­es, the sup­plies are near­ly end­less. All that is left is to don an apron, grab your drink and be­gin. And Fe­l­isha said it best: “They both tie in very well to­geth­er.”

If you are fa­mil­iar with the area, Can­vas Café is with­in walk­ing dis­tance of quite a few schools and af­ter-school cen­tres in the St. Au­gus­tine area, in­clud­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus. Ac­cord­ing to Fe­l­isha, there is no day that goes by with­out a group of friends agree­ing to meet up, catch up and so­cialise at her busi­ness in a peace­ful en­vi­ron­ment to de­stress and re­lease their artis­tic side.

“Since I opened, the com­mon re­sponse has been that they’re just re­al­ly hap­py for a place to es­cape. And the colours in­side of here is very in­spir­ing to them. It’s not like a lot of oth­er places where it’s dark and low light. They re­al­ly feel en­cour­aged to come over be­cause of the pop of colour, and they get an ac­tiv­i­ty to do in be­tween ex­ams, stress of school. A lot of them are hap­py to come and colour,” she said.

At Can­vas Café that day was Lili-Jane Thomas, a 24-year-old UWI stu­dent, along with a friend she had been mean­ing to “catch up” with.

“I love to paint, paint­ing is my pas­sion and I want­ed to kind of in­tro­duce this new cool place to her,” Lili-Jane told us as she paint­ed ab­stract art.

“Places like here might seem in­tim­i­dat­ing, but I like com­ing here be­cause of Fe­l­isha and the art, the op­por­tu­ni­ty to paint and sip and eat. It is a unique ex­pe­ri­ence. I don’t like to par­ty, so this is me,” she added.

Among the stu­dents and work­ing pro­fes­sion­als who slip away on their lunch breaks to pa­tro­n­ise Can­vas Café are lec­tur­ers, along with some of Fe­l­isha’s for­mer teach­ers from Lak­sh­mi Girls’ Hin­du Col­lege. They come not on­ly for a brief mo­ment of re­lax­ation, but al­so out of pride in her cre­ative busi­ness ven­ture.

“Plus, a lot of them like to shy away from in­ter­na­tion­al fran­chise chains, so they’re hap­py for some­thing a lit­tle more lo­cal too, in terms of the drinks.”

With a full-time busi­ness, it is hard to be­lieve that Fe­l­isha is al­so a full-time un­der­grad­u­ate stu­dent at Costaatt, pur­su­ing a de­gree in graph­ic de­sign. Even though she her­self some­times finds it hard to be­lieve, she makes it work.

“Hon­est­ly, it’s very, very dif­fi­cult, be­cause I do five cours­es while al­so man­ag­ing the Café. But what re­al­ly helps is just hav­ing prop­er time man­age­ment. And al­so my lec­tur­ers are very, very grace­ful. They are very un­der­stand­ing of what the re­al­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion is … At least three of them [lec­tur­ers] have come.”

Fe­l­isha says she en­joys see­ing how her busi­ness idea res­onates with so many, as pa­trons come to view the café as a “safe space” to con­nect with oth­ers or even with them­selves on so­lo dates while they sketch or paint. She is even part­ner­ing with an­oth­er small busi­ness to host “sip-and-cake paint” events at the café.

Fe­l­isha be­lieves Trin­bag­o­ni­ans are boom­ing with cre­ativ­i­ty and, as time pass­es, she is re­al­is­ing that as the art scene grows, more peo­ple are em­brac­ing it as a way to cope with the men­tal and emo­tion­al pres­sures of every­day life.

“You see them fix­at­ed on their can­vas. While I’m won­der­ing, ‘oh my gosh, are they en­joy­ing their drink? They bare­ly took a sip.’ But no, they’re just en­grossed in the can­vas and they’re paint­ing. They spend hours here. Some, they may come at 12 pm and leave at clos­ing time, you know. It is just vi­su­al­ly see­ing how present they are with their paint­ing.”

Look­ing ahead, Fe­l­isha en­vi­sions Can­vas Café evolv­ing, in­tro­duc­ing new ex­pres­sions of art, ex­pand­ing its cre­ative of­fer­ings and al­low­ing the busi­ness to grow at its own pace.

“… and pos­si­bly a big­ger space.”