In April, local artist and Boynes Emerging Artist Award founder Chantal Boynes expressed hope the fourth edition would finally see Caribbean artists entering the competition. And Boynes had her desire fulfilled as several Trinidadian artists entered and a Jamaican placed second overall.

The award is an independent, international artist-run online art competition that accepts all two-dimensional mediums from drawings to paintings to photography. There is no set theme for the international competition and artists are required to submit the best of their portfolio. It was launched in 2019 and “created to support, promote and connect emerging artists all around the world and work to enhance the profile of young and/or undiscovered talent.”

Boynes told Newsday in a telephone interview the number of entries for the fourth edition was 909, almost double the 470 from the third edition. The artists were mainly from Australia, Canada, the US and the UK as well as some countries in Europe.

[caption id="attachment_894630" align="alignnone" width="778"] Boynes Emerging Artist Award founder and Trinidadian artist Chantal Boynes. -[/caption]

And for the first time, there were Caribbean entrants: about 10 from Trinidad and Tobago and one from Jamaica, Kuruma Reid.

“I recognised the work instantly and I got excited personally that there were fellow Caribbean artists.”

She explained in the first round she and the other judges only look at the work, and the examination of who the applicants are as an artist only occurs in the final round. When she discovered Kuruma Reid was from Jamaica and had recently graduated law school she recalled having a “big smile”.

Reid, who was born and raised in Jamaica, won second place with his piece Black Molasses 1, which was pen and ink on paper.

“Black Molasses 1 is the first of my series Metamorphosis. The piece is not only to mark a different level of skill and originality I intend to improve upon but to also pay homage to my African ancestors and the blood that was shed during slavery,” he said in a statement.

On his win, Reid commented: “I am extremely happy to be named the second-place winner in the fourth edition of the Boynes Emerging Artist Award. I am comforted by the thought that my piece was found to be worthy of the prize in the eyes of the esteemed jurors who I had taken the time to research.”

[caption id="attachment_894628" align="alignnone" width="570"] The piece Black Molasses 1 (pen and ink on paper) by second-place winner Kuruma Reid. -[/caption]

First place went to Younes Mohammad from Iraq with his photography portrait Brahim.

On his subject, Mohammad explained: “Brahim Ahmad Ebrahim Ghader was born in 1969, he (has been) Peshmerga (military forces of the autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq) since 1993 and during this time, two times he was wounded (and) last time he was fighting ISIS in May 2015 and he lost two legs with one eye and a lot of shrapnel in his body by the explosion from an IED in Daqoq area near Kirkuk, Iraq.”

On his win, Mohammad commen

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