Stanley Greaves

Guyanese painter and writer

Stanley Greaves (born 1934) is a Guyanese painter and writer who is one of the Caribbean's most distinguished artists. Writing in 1995 at the time of a retrospective exhibition to celebrate Greaves's 60th birthday, Rupert Roopnarine stated: "It may be that no major Caribbean artist of our time has been more fecund and versatile than Stanley Greaves of Guyana." Greaves himself has said of his own creativity:

I still don't talk about myself as making art! Other people do that. I am a maker of things. In the early days, I found empty matchboxes, cigarette boxes, bits of string, wire, empty boot polish tins, whatever, and made things. Drawing was just another activity, and it still is. My favorite medium is still wood, of course. My hitherto secret preoccupation with writing poems, which has now come to light, is another form of making. Recently at the University of Birmingham, where I did a reading, I was asked if the paintings influenced the poetry, and I said, "No, they come from the same source."

Greaves was born in a "tenement yard" on Carmichael Street, Georgetown, Guyana. He studied art in Guyana with Edward Burrowes in the Working Peoples' Art Class (1948–61)

As an artist Greaves works mainly in painting, but has also produced sculpture, drawings, prints and pottery. He was awarded the Guyana national honour of the Golden Arrow of Achievement in 1975. He has exhibited at national level, winning several prizes, and has had one man shows. He represented Guyana twice at the São Paulo Biennial and once at the Medellin Bienniale in Colombia. He has had major exhibitions in the UK (in 1999 his work was shown in the landmark exhibition curated by Gottfried Donkor, The Elders, alongside that of Brother Everald Brown of Jamaica) His most recent collection is The Poems Man (Peepal Tree Press, 2009). He co authored, with Anne Walmsley, Art in the Caribbean: An Introduction, published in 2010 by New Beacon Books. "Haiku" is his third book. Each contains pen and ink drawings. He has also collaborated with Akima Mc Pherson of the University of Guyana to write a series of articles in the Sunday Stabroek on individual works in the Guyana National Collection.

Greaves was for a time married to the painter Alison Chapman Andrews.