Famous Dancer: Homage to Vola
- Famous Dancer:Homage to Vola
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R. Brent Malone. Famous Dancer: Homage to Vola. 1984. Acrylic on canvas. 43 x 32 inches. Courtesy of The Dawn Davies Collection.
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R. Brent Malone, a graduate of Queen's College High School, was the first Bahamian to receive a distinction in "A" Level Art in the Cambridge General Certificate of Education. He studied at Don Russell's Academy of Fine Arts and was an apprentice at the Chelsea Pottery in Nassau. In England he attended the Beckenham School of Art, and then obtained a National Diploma in Design from the Ravensbourne College of Art and Design. As a graduate student, his first exhibition was at Oxford College, England, after which he returned to The Bahamas in 1964. Over the years, he established several art galleries to highlight the works of emerging Bahamian artists and in which he mounted eighteen exhibitions of his own work: Bahamian Pottery (1964-65), The Loft Art Gallery (1965-70), Matinee Art Gallery (1977-80), and The Temple Gallery (1981-87), which merged in 1987 with Marlborough Antiques. In the early 1990s he studied etching and printmaking at Bob Blackburn's Printmaking Workshop and at Nyle Press in New York. He held important solo exhibitions at The Central Bank Art Gallery: Retrospective (1962-1992) in 1992, an official Quincentennial event; The Nude in 2001; and Journey 2003 (with photographs by Sabrina Lightbourn). Internationally, Malone presented a one-man show at the Black Music Association of America Conference in New Orleans in 1982, various other exhibitions in the 1980s and 1990s. Seven of his etchings are in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle in the private collection of Queen Elizabeth II, and his paintings were presented by The Bahamas government to the leaders of Canada, Mexico, Republic of China, St. Kitts, and South Africa. Malone was a recipient of the Distinguished Citizens' Award for the Visual Arts from The Bahamas Chamber of Commerce; the E. Clement Bethel Award for Excellence in the Visual Arts from The College of The Bahamas in 1991; an M.B.E. Award in the Queen's Honours of 1993; and a Silver Jubilee Award from The Bahamas government in 1998. He was a founding member of B-C.A.U.S.E., a group dedicated to the exploration and development of Bahamian art, and he is considered a "founding father" of modern art in The Bahamas.
