Fig Tree Studio Art Gallery

Sallie Harker was born in England in 1964 and grew up in Scotland. Sallie studied sculpture in Gloucestershire before sailing to Antigua in 1987 where she has lived ever since with her husband and two children, Theodore and Mehalah. In 2007 Sallie opened the Fig Tree Studio Art Gallery. Sallies makes sculpture by commission for specific spaces. 

Sallie experiments with different media and enjoys using oils, watercolour and printmaking. Over the last few years she has developed a technique using gold leaf and oil paints on wooden shingles. She mainly depicts birds and marine life, however is also inspired by Caribbean life and loves to draw portraits and landscapes.

Although excelling in Art at an early age, Gilly's mother advised her to get a proper career, as the ability to paint would never leave her. Thus Gilly gained a BSC Hons Degree in Biological Sciences at the University of Sussex. A happy coincidence found her on vacation in Antigua where her husband was offered a job. Delighted with the prospect of a challenging rather than enduring bureaucracy, she dropped everything and moved there in 1984, seizing the opportunity of fulfilling her childhood dream of painting full time.

Whilst bringing up her three young children, she slowly developed her painting techniques, mainly in watercolour and acrylic. Her subjects reflect beauty and charm of the enchanted island of Antigua and to this day, inspiration is never lacking.

Ezikiel Jno Baptiste is a well known calabash carver. He is a popular character and a friend of many in the village of La Plaine in the Commonwealth of Dominica where he was born and raised. He also loves to play music and is a member of a local Dominican band.

Over the years he has developed many different types of carved calabash craft including bowls, boxes, sculptures, spoons and baskets. His distinctive style of graphic depiction of marine animals such as fish, turtles, crabs, octopus, whales and birds are highly sought after.

Katie McConachie began her artistic career painting 'Special Efforts' for Hanna Barbera Productions before moving to the island of Antigua. She left California in 1985 to "go sailing" and settled in Antigua. She started Seahorse Studios, supplying Graphic Design facilities for the local businesses and yachting communities.

Katie's favourite medium is Prismacolour Pencils, which afford her drawings an incredible amount of detail. She also works in Acrylic paints. Her subject matter span from her pets to portraits of birds and dogs to Native Island and Underwater life.

Bequia artist Jacob Scott makes baskets, vessels and hats from recycled beach rope. Each is hand-sewn and can take months to create.

After graduating with honors from The Ringling School of Art, Erickson became an accomplished drawing instructor, potter and jewellery designer. From early on, the artist's personal focus has been the creative contemplation of the human form. This remains at the heart of her authority, while the exploration of light and bold colour always infuses her work.

Ericsson's love of figurative painting was renewed on her first visit to the West Indies in 1979. She was beguiled by the magical, unsinkable Islands. The saturated colours and swaying people inspired a new rhythm in her work. Her vision of Island society, distinguished by her 'coup de crayon', has quickly brought her numerous exhibitions and international collectors.

Mehalah Spencer is a young artist born and raised on the island of Antigua, specialising in limited edition linocuts. She is the daughter of Sallie Harker (previously mentioned). Her passion for linocuts started at school where she first learnt to carve, later going on to develop her skills spending time with a family friend and established English artist James Dodds.

Her work depicts typical Caribbean scenes representative of her life growing up in Antigua; mainly of sailing boats and chattel houses. Her signature colour to print in, is a dark ultramarine blue. Currently studying Biochemistry at the University of Warwick, all her profits are going towards paying for her studies.

Petros Meaza was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where he studied at the Addis Ababa University School of Fine Art. He then went on to complete International Artist Resident Training Programs in Paris, France. Following this he moved to the Caribbean island of Dominica, where he taught as an Art Instructor for the Ministry of Education. He is now pursuing a PhD in Fine Art (Painting) in Montreal, Canada.

"I favour the impressionist style of painting and I consequently use irregular splotches and spontaneous knife and brush strokes. My paintings evoke the spirit of Africa with vivid colours and frequent use of traditional African symbolism. I enjoy showing movement in my paintings. For instance, some of my art works depict dancers with energetic and continuous movements."

Born in Canada, Naydene studied at the OCAD University in Toronto and Florence, Italy where she graduated with donors in the figurative discipline. Her work reflects a search from reconciliation between apparent contradictions such as creation and destruction, sexuality and spirituality, light and dark and accidental and intentional.

"I create my pieces in a process that involves layering, collaging, glazing and painting elements together. I then destroy certain parts of the image by stripping away some of the layers to reveal contradiction techniques. I work with a blend of beeswax and oil paint, known as encaustic, which gives a beautiful texture and depth of colour to my work."

Naydene's current paintings draw the viewer in with an unnerving attraction. She captures her subjects with an agitated sensitivity that exposes her command of the medium, unique colour sense and expressive quality.

Jo is a painter and printmaker. She uses several various printmaking techniques including woodcut, silkscreen and drypoint etching, often combining them to produce her unique prints. 
She also draws and then paints directly onto board that has been prepared with gesso. 

The love she has for Antigua, it's people and in particular, Carnival is reflected in her colourful studies. She captures not only the characters of her subjects but also the fun and chaos of Carnival and flavour of everyday life on this vibrant, beautiful island.

Nzimbu Browne is self-taught and creates artwork using fibres which are carefully selected from banana trees. He wanders across the fertile earth of St. Vincent and the Grenadines to find his medium. He does his collages with dried banana leaves of different colours and shades in a little road side kiosk near his home. Nzimbu's work is full of tradition history and heritage.

In his work he wants to express festive patterns of life, stories of culture and of people struggling for self determination. His pictures of everyday life scenes of St Vincent and the Grenadines are lively and full of movement.

Carmen Miller is an Australian artist and silk painter from Melbourne who sailed to Antigua in 2013, ended up staying and is based in English Harbour today. Each of her pieces are hand painted, each one is unique.

He work is inspired by the beautiful nature of Antigua and Barbuda and it's surrounding islands. She vibrantly represents leaves, coral, birds and flowers in her scarves. A special collection was made for Fig Tree Studio Art Gallery, which were inspired by the surrounding tropical flowers.

Janet Harker has been a frequent visitor to Antigua since 1989. She was trained in England at Birmingham College of Art and The Royal College of Art in London. She worked in design offices in Denmark and London until she had children and from then on as a freelance designer and textile artist. Her work can be found in private and public collections worldwide.

She has always found pleasure in drawing and painting watercolours and found Antigua abundant in interesting subjects, particularly old buildings and beautiful flowers.

Jamila Gregory was born and raised in Antigua and is a self-taught prisma colour artist. In her early twenties she left the island to study Economics and International Development Studies in Halifax Nova Scotia.

Jamila comes from a creative background. As a child she always helped her mother with Caribbean flower arrangements. This lead her to become interested in Antigua's flora and fauna. She is inspired by bright vibrant colours and is particularly interested in the different tones of natural light and its relationship with shade.

Carlos Diaz Miro is a well known cuban sculptor, now living in Antigua with his family. He creates magnificent wood carvings from Antiguan mahogany. His main focus is marine life such as; turtles, sharks and fish. He also enjoys carving figures of Caribbean people.