Stafford Schliefer Art for Sale at Auction

b. 1939 -

Stafford Schliefer, self-taught artist, born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1939, has been painting professionally since the age of 28. When asked what motivated him to paint, Schliefer simply says that painting was like breathing for him, and that he remembers painting from early boyhood. His career began humbly, by exhibiting his art on the hotel strips in Kingston and Montego Bay. The recognition from art critics allowed his work to be moved off the streets and into the art galleries and museums. Very early in his career, he received two Certificates of Merit from the Jamaica Festival Arts Commission (1970, 1972) and a High Commendation Award from the Institute of Jamaica (1971). His first solo art show was also in 1971.

Schliefer’s art has been thematically mixed from the outset, including erotica, Jamaican cultural traditions, and sociopolitical themes, executed in acrylics, oils, water colour, mixed-media collage, and drawings. His paintings articulate distinctive styles, with the use of figuration and abstract expressionism, often energetically transmitted by exuberant use of colour and motion with gestural brushwork. His depictions of Jamaican pocomania ceremonies, Jonkunnu masquerades, and sugarcane workers in the field are examples of this. A substantial part of Schliefer’s art reflects issues relevant to the conditions of poverty and violence in the society, expressing his personal confrontation with same, in visual terms.