It began in Brazil ... from A to A!
How and why does a Harvard trained Attorney become an Artist ...?
A transcendental artist who now sees her brief in terms and lights of very different hues and her life's purpose unfolding on canvas more than in court rooms. Despairing and disillusioned by the legal milieu in her native Haiti, Ketty Guillaume Devieux, felt compelled to seek another path to inspire and elevate man to seek his inner worth. The opportunity to give full expression to her artistic side came when she and her husband were living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from 2002 -2004. That was an opening, she now says, which revealed an enlightening awareness in her of something which could be called awakening to our soul...or a homecoming to her true self.
The ideals, the ethics, the belief in the goodness of mankind as enshrined in law and literature and imbued in Ketty through family values plus study in the finest halls of learning had been proven powerless in the face of corruption. Numbed by such realization as many people have been over the centuries in many countries when faced with similar conflicts of integrity Ketty chose to vote with her feet.
Such suppression however in someone so finely educated and sensitive to man’s greater being can not be contained indefinitely… and so the tension, the pressure, the force to represent the cry for humanity welled up… and Ketty found a new voice: an artist was born.
Her work ranges from the raw to the rejuvenated. It pares back to the bone to find that honesty and perfection she holds so dear and we all arrive on the planet with. It goes through a honing, a genesis and finally there are elements of renewal as well as the calm that only Nature knows yet is also integral to man’s inner beauty.
It conveys the transcendental and those who are open to it will relate readily to the struggle, the battle we all face in the drive to reclaim the real worth of man . . . and help the species take the faltering but pre ordained steps to some future evolution.
The artist, the prophet, the visionaries – they give us glimpses of the path ahead. Fragments and signs that act as invaluable glow worms that reflect the ultimate course and create a quiver in the cells that inspires and beckons man along his intended route.
Ketty’s art in these pages inspires in that manner and embodies the struggle not just of herself but of her nation and of mankind as a work in progress…echoed in trees, sometimes buried in blue and etched on faces or hidden in embryonic form, then shot through with light and shafts of hope. It is all there for those who ‘have eyes to see.’
Her work transcends time and nations and reaches out to us all. Ketty credits the “amazing energy and feeling” in Brazil with sparking her artistic birth. But to that she brought an extensive international background of experience, from her years in the US to travels in many countries which has all proved invaluable for conveying that universality which shines through her work… and most recently is reflecting another phase - Asia, where she is currently stationed.
Vonnie Boston is a Freelance Correspondent Hong Kong