Eglon Daley
School Children, 1984
acrylic on canvas
54 x 94"

Eglon Daley’s large-scale paintings act like enormous snapshots of everyday life in a Maroon town in Jamaica. Cropped with a photographer’s eye, these documentary images catch the subtle nuances of a moment where a look, a glance or a slouch of the shoulders tells a whole story. There is always a moment of eye contact in Daley’s images, an instant where the viewer can connect with the protagonist in an intimate way. Some faces in Daley’s scenes are rendered with realistic detail; other’s faces are in shadow, the features not defined at all. Daley’s accomplishment is that he shows us what we already know about our perception – faced with an assortment of information we tend to focus on one face, one pattern or one color.  Daley’s technique also evokes the sensibility of a photographic negative; where the highlights are in shadow and the shadows highlighted. With his very sensitive renderings of group scenes, Daley offers an innovative and intimate approach to traditional Jamaican genre painting.  Daley has done many important mural commissions in the DC area including Of the People installed in One Judiciary Square and In Transit in the North Terminal of Ronald Reagan National Airport. So, in addition to rendering typical scenes from Jamaican life, Daley “engages in a continuing dialogue with Washington and all of its diversity.”

 “I have come to appreciate my heritage –the rich culture of the Maroons settling in a compound. I became fascinated with depicting their story through my art.”