IN a heartfelt revelation, Jamaican MacArthur Fellow Ebony G Patterson has shared that every art piece she’s crafted had its origins on the island.

Describing Jamaica as her anchor and the place where she feels most grounded, she said she often travels to and from the United States, finding it impossible to leave the place she calls home behind.

“My work always begins in Jamaica, and even if it gets finished elsewhere this is always the place where it physically begins,” said Patterson.

“Being home creates a particular kind of anchor that I can’t get nowhere else because my community is here,” she told the Jamaica Observer. “I come home because I need to come home. It is a need, it is not a want, and so for me it’s about my own survival.

“I am possible because of everything I gained here in my young personhood. And my decisions to look elsewhere really just had a lot to do with an absence of what is here but, at the same time, that absence did not facilitate distance for me. It didn’t make me want to be further removed,” she added.

A multimedia artist whose work explores the themes of post-colonial space, visibility, invisibility, regeneration, and mourning, the 43-year-old creates densely layered and visually dazzling pieces that include painting, photography, video, textiles, sculptures, and installation.

Her artistic journey spans more than two decades and was ignited in a grade four classroom at Holy Childhood Preparatory School where her art teacher charged her to draw something for every day of summer.

Patterson would develop her skills as she transitioned to high school, finding great support from her art teacher, Ian Stone, at Convent of Mercy Academy “Alpha”, and eventually lecturers at Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in fine arts.

Reflecting on her foundation as an artist, she spoke volumes about her educators who guided her throughout her youth.

“I would always say vehemently that I am possible because of the grooming that I had here in Jamaica. That is what has shaped the way I think as an artist,” she declared.

Listed as a MacArthur fellow this year, Patterson’s artistry has garnered global recognition, propelling her career to new heights — an achievement she said her eight-year-old self could not have dreamt possible.

“I am baffled in the sense that it’s mind-boggling,” said Patterson.

“When I think about the class of people who have been MacArthurs over the years, they are a number of people who I’ve known their practices as artists or as writers, and I just think that they are brilliant — and rightly so. It makes sense to me that they would get the genius grant. To think that not one person, but a collective — a community of people — think that I fit in that same space is just deeply humbling. I am still coming to terms with it,” she told the Sunday Observer.

The MacArthur Fellows Program identifies extraordinary creative individuals with a track record of excellence in a field of scholarship or area of practice, and the ability to impact society in significant ways.

Nominees are brought to the programme’s attention through a pool of invited external nominators who present the most creative and transformative people they know within their field and beyond.

Each fellowship comes with an award of US$800,000 to the recipient, paid out in equal quarterly instalments over five years.

Patterson is the second Jamaican to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She follows in the footsteps of Jamaican-born poet Claudia Rankine.

Patterson shared that the fellowship has awarded her the opportunity to slow down, catch her breath, and take some much-needed rest. However, she clarified that she will not be hanging up her tools, simply taking more time to think about what’s next as she refuels.

With almost 100 pieces under her belt, Patterson has had much success in her career as an artist.

Her work has been exhibited at venues like National Gallery of Jamaica, Alice Yard in Trinidad and Tobago, National Gallery of Bermuda, New York Botanical Garden, The Museum of Art and Design, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Baltimore Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

She shared that with her art she hopes to make viewers pause, stating that we are living in a world where individuals have become so accustomed to always moving.

“If we are not on the move, going to places, then we are on the move on our phone, constantly consuming information, and so my work is meant to somehow slow you down. The next thing that I attempt to do in the work is to get you to question. These are questions about: What am I looking at? What is this doing? What are these things doing together?” said Patterson.

“My work is basically a manifestation of my thinking about a series of questions or ideas, and a lot of those questions or ideas are centred on considering our society, considering the kind of socio-economic and racialised structures that we have inherited from our colonisers and that we continue to use as a way of negotiating with each other,” she explained.

Beyond her achievement of being named a MacArthur fellow, Patterson is co-curator of the 2024 Prospect New Orleans Triennial, and the first artist to hold that position in the triennial’s history.

She was the recipient of the 2017 Tiffany Foundation Biennial Grant, which supports outstanding artists to produce new work and push the boundaries of their creativity. She also received the prestigious United States Artists Award, and the Stone & DeMcguire Contemporary Art Award given to outstanding alumni of Sam Fox School of Art, Washington University.