Ebony Patterson

The work of young Jamaican artist, Ebony Patterson, is among those of five Commonwealth artists on at the Royal Over-Seas League's (ROSL) headquarters (Over Seas House) in London.

Twenty-two year-old Patterson, a final year student at the Edna Manley School for the Visual and Performing Arts, was a recipient of the ROSL Travel scholarship for young artists for 2002. This year, she received a Scholarship through the Pont Aven School for Contemporary Art in Brittany, France, which allowed her to complete a four-week summer school programme.

Miss Patterson said that although she was a painting major, the summer school allowed her to focus on her second option, sculpture installation and site-specific work.

"It was a really enriching experience. I was able to focus on and concentrate on installation and site-specific work. This helped me to resolve problems I had the previous term. It was good, and I received an "A" and the lecturers were happy and impressed with my work," she said.

Her work, which is part of the ROSL's Art Scholar's exhibition features work she did while on last year's travel scholarship in Scotland. The exhibition also includes one of the installations she did while in France. She described the travel scholarship as a very rewarding and great experience.

"I was left to work on my own by lecturers. I had the opportunity to visit major galleries in London and Scotland and to see the works of artists that I learnt about in classes and seen publications. I was nervous, but it was a time that allowed me to grow," she said.

She described her work as being a quest to understand herself and to discover her identity as a young, black Caribbean woman.

The ROSL exhibition will run in London until September. The exhibition then moves to Edinburgh in Scotland and will run from until March 2004.

ROSL Arts offers five UK Travel Scholarships to artists from the Commonwealth to spend four weeks at Hospitalfield House, Arbroath, Scotland studying, and one-week accommodation and hospitality in London or Edinburgh. The works produced during the Travel Scholarships are then shown as part of a group exhibition.

For the past 50 years, ROSL has developed a range of art activities and projects aimed at developing the careers of talented young artists and musicians from the UK and the commonwealth.

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