Painted from life by Sir Roland Richardson

Marigot, French St. Martin

Original Oil on Canvas

72” x 26”

May 2015

$8,500

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There is no way that we can at a glance imagine the richness and complexity of the person we see on the street yet in fact that they attract your attention maybe heralds hidden treasures.  This was certainly the case with Roseann Romnit.

It was carnival time, a time when I also got into a frenzy of painting the crowds, the multicolor, gyrating troops, the music making my chest and clothes and canvas throb with the blasting roadside march in the hot afternoon sun.  When I met Roseann though it was a quiet afternoon.  She stood on the roadside in a large broad hat, a fiery red blouse and a down-to-the-ground white embroidered skirt down to her ankles, her umbrella and the stance that made her appear to be the center of everything.

I immediately pulled my car over and called out, 

“I would love to paint your portrait!”

She said, “When?”

“Thursday?”

She answers again, “What time and where?”

And so began an adventure that resulted in several charcoal portraits and a large six-foot oil painting dressed as I first saw her on the roadside.  

This lady, dress to the T was headed to Town ready for rain or shine, for Jump-Up and parade, noise, smoke, food and drink, turned out as I got to know her, had returned from Holland to her native St. Martin, having been declared unable to be helped with terminal cancer.  Yet here she was, several years later, cancer-free, never having been operated on or through the use of medication, only herbs and cleansing and fasting.