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Arnold discovered his love of art at the age of nine. In 1977 at
the age of fifteen he was nominated for a best painting award in
Dominica’s Fame Awards. In 1981 Toulon studied carving with
celebrated Haitian Sculptor Louis Desire and from 1982 – 86
attended the Edna Manley School of Visual Arts in Kingston,
Jamaica. Between 1988 – 90 he turned his attention to the fashion
industry where he created his own line of hand painted textiles.
Over the years,
Toulon has developed a clear sense of his own personal style.
Resident in St. Lucia since 1993, the first sign of his
outstanding artistic vocabulary was his groundbreaking “Fragment”
series of 1994. Relinquishing the paintbrush, he instead employed
old phone cards to spread oil paint on canvas then etched into the
surface with an ice pick to create a 3 –D image.
He takes his
cues from the obvious rhythms of Caribbean life, but he takes his
Caribbean seriously and paints with a fierce probing intelligence
with delivers the goods. Toulon finds his real challenge is how
to deal with the cliché of the Caribbean: impossibly blue skies,
riotous colors bursting from every wayside, voluptuous curves
manifesting in fruit and femme.
In August 2001,
Toulon won a special Recognition Award for his contribution to the
development of art in Dominica by the National Cultural Council.
He has also been invited to lecture at universities across the
Caribbean. Some of Toulon’s creations for the Corporate world can
be seen at the ECCB Head office in St. Kitts, the Texaco head
office in Barbados, Government Headquarters in Dominica and Anse
Chastenet Hotel in St. Lucia. |
