Virginia Pacifique-Marshall

Artist/author Virginia Pacifique-Marshall is a retired primary school teacher and principal. With more than 35 years’ experience as an elementary school teacher and professional certificates in Educational Administration and Supervision and the Fundamentals of Fine Art, she is finally pursuing her love of expressing her ideas on canvas. She is a member of both The Women in Art Organization of Trinidad and Tobago and The Art Society of Trinidad and Tobago .

Inspired by Picasso’s cubism and Trinidadian Master Artist Leroy Clarke, Pacifique-Marshall’s early works (200 -2010) were mainly abstract expressions done in acrylics, characterised by vibrant colors, lines, angles and geometric shapes.

Pacifique-Marshall also has a passion for local culture and a keen desire for keeping our traditions alive. Her solo exhibition of our Traditional Carnival Characters in 2012 at the Normandy Hotel, followed by the launch of her book The Carnival Suite in 2014 was, as she said, her “contribution to keeping this part of our culture alive.” The book features photographs of her Carnival paintings and a bit of history and a description of each character.

From 2008, she has exhibited with both the Art Society and the Women in Art Organizations yearly and held two small group exhibitions entitled Pacifique-Marshall at the Fine Art gallery in 2012 and “MEMOIRS – Preserving our Heritage” at the Art Society in 2018. This later collection of Festivals and Folklore expresses the vibrant spirit and atmosphere of Trinidad and Tobago culture. Here Pacifique-Marshall experiments with realism, impressionism and cubism.

Among her achievements was the receipt of the Award of Merit Trophy from the Women in Art Organization in 2017 for her paintings The Smoke Ceremony and The Water Ritual of our First Peoples.

Pacifique-Marshall also continues teaching. She did six-months’ art tutoring of a young woman with Down Syndrome, assisted for four years in teaching the older children at the Tamar International one-day Art Camp, held twice yearly, and currently tutors primary schoolchildren of her community. Over the years, many secondary school students have visited her studio and interviewed her as a local artist for their School-based Assessment (S.B.A) A

In 2016, Virginia Pacifique-Marshall opened the Pacifique Art Studio at her home in Arima, where she displays her original paintings, prints, rock paintings, cards, carnival prints on T-shirts and copies of her book.