My self-exposed exile from the land of my birth began with a
voyage through the French canals in 1969 and cumulated in 1974 when, with my
wife and small daughter, we sailed a 30ft ketch from England to the
Caribbean.
Somerset Maugham, in his novel The Moon and Sixpence, expresses the reason for this estrangement
as follows:
…Sometimes a man hits
upon a place to which he mysteriously feels he belongs. Here is the home he
sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men
he has never known, as if they were familiar to him from his birth…
But even before setting foot in the Caribbean, I was lured
to the region by the image of a seated nude by the sculptor Enzo Plazzotta
titled The Jamaican Girl. Thus, my love for the Caribbean and my
attraction to the beauty of the nude really began at an exhibition of the
sculptor’s work at the 1971 Kings Lynn Arts Festival.
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