For as long as she can remember, Naila Felice has had a creative shadow.
The ability to create beautiful artwork manifested itself in her early childhood and has followed her around ever since. The art educator and visual artist told We Art, “It’s almost as though I just couldn’t get away from it. I loved art as a child,” a love she believes she inherited from her grandmother, ceramic and visual artist Barbara Felice.
The younger Felice recently exhibited four of her pieces at The Teachers Show at the ThinkArtWork TT studio in Port-of-Spain. As a full-time art educator, she felt it was time to find inspiration and nurture her creativity outside the classroom.
“I don’t know what it is about educators and being full-time in the field and therefore not feeling inspired, not actively creating. That tends to happen to a lot of educators.”
She said that last year, she contacted internationally renowned artist Carly Harris, who agreed to mentor her.
“He helped me to shift the mindset that I had, where you create when you have time or you create because you feel like it. You know, kind of ditching the idea that there’s any kind of emotion involved. You create because you are a creator.”
The shift in mindset was a major factor in her decision to participate in the exhibition.
“And you could actually see some of his influence in the work as well.”
The Trinity College East art teacher said her favourite mediums are acrylics and oils, and that she also uses collage and textural elements.
“I love texture; texture gets me really excited. And I like using oil on top of acrylic as well. That’s a new thing that I’ve been exploring.”
Her artworks are usually based on natural snapshots, such as coconuts, mangoes and bananas.
“That has been, I guess, what has started my art career and I still run to for comfort.”
But even that was built on a foundation that goes back to her primary school days.
“I would make up stories, which sometimes didn’t even make sense. But the main part of the story that I loved doing was depicting the story in a drawing. It was quite cute.”
When she moved on to secondary school at Bishop Anstey in Port-of-Spain, her artistic abilities continued to stand out and develop.
“I excelled at art through school. I received the award for art at the CSEC level, having gotten the highest mark for CSEC art at my school. And then when I went on to sixth form, I got the LeRoy Clarke trophy for excellence in art at the sixth form level.”
She entered numerous competitions and would regularly place.
“And so art just was always there. There was never really a choice.”
She encourages students who love art to pursue that passion, even if they do so alongside other interests.
“I know there’s still a very limited outlook on the arts in some households. So you would have parents who still just want their kids to do sciences or business. I have come across a few students whose parents did not believe that they can do anything with visual arts, and they weren’t allowed to select it.”
However, she insists that she will continue to advocate for the arts and show young people how much they can do with visual art, especially now.
“We have become so much more of a visual world and everything around us has to be designed and created. Visual arts is the foundation of design.”
At CSEC level, she explained, art is one of the few subjects that allows students to express themselves.
“You get to choose your theme. It’s no longer from Forms One to Three where we give you an assignment, and this is what you have to do. At CSEC level, the young men get to choose.
“They get the opportunity to decide, ‘okay, I want my theme to be Caribbean landscapes, or I want my theme to be survival or mental disorders’ or whatever they are passionate about. They get to create artworks based on the expressive forms that they choose, like painting, drawing, printmaking.”
Like all other subjects, art is labour-intensive, she explained. However, it breaks the monotony of having to navigate large amounts of information and, in some cases, cram for an examination.
“You’re basically pouring out and pouring into something. So I tell them to lock in, put on a podcast, put on music and just let it go, let go, pour in.”
Felice has also exhibited at Horizons Art Gallery and the Art Society of T&T, and she hopes to showcase her work at other exhibitions next year.
“But ultimately, I want to have a solo exhibition because I have not done a solo exhibition in many years.”
One day, she also hopes to open an art academy where she can help young, gifted artists recognise their abilities and learn to own them.
