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Bob Mackie was born in Sunderland,
England in 1938. He left England as a teenager and after
spending one year in Jamaica, he moved to Trinidad. Living in
the then beautiful valley of Diego Martin with its areas of
green bamboo and meandering river, it was a move to “Paradise”.
Bob attended both Fatima and St. Mary’s
Colleges, ending his formal education with a Cambridge H.C. in
Science. Bob entered industry in the late fifties. He trained
first as a textile engraver, then went into both printing and
dyeing in the late sixties and had a sojourn as a manager of
“Simla” when it was connected to the Bronx Zoo in New York. Bob
did field studies with M.I.T. Stanford, Doile and Karolynska
Inst. Bob maintained the properties until 1974 when they were
given to the Asa Wright Nature Centre. Bob knew both Asa Wright
and John Dunston personally.
Art wise, Bob is totally self taught, a
chameleon of styles and techniques. His artistic talent comes
from his father, who died in Spain fighting for the Spanish
people against the axis of Franco, Mussolini and Hitler. He was
killed just before Bob’s birth in January 1938.
As a toddler (pre antibiotics), Bob suffered
an attack of bacterial meningitis. Bob was comatose for a while
and in hospital for several months, almost given up for dead.
Fortunately Bob survived and spent his early school days doing
art work and murals for the school classroom, thus in a way
missing an early grounding in basic education. Bob’s mother
never missed an opportunity to increase his skills and his toys
were pencils, paper and “plasticine”.
Bob first exhibited in the 1962 Independence
show at the T.A.S. in Woodbrook. Bob has had one-man shows for
the past forty years. He presently works for the “Tile Guild
Inc” in Los Angeles, specialising in Renaissance tiles and
murals for houses in Malibu and Beverly Hills. His work has
appeared in Architectural Digest and other publications.
One of Bob’s sculptures was presented to an
official of the government of Trinidad and Tobago and another
piece is now
in the Board Room at the “Stadium of Light” soccer stadium in
Sunderland.
In the last two years, Bob has been selected
as a judge for several art shows in the Los Angeles area.
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