Picture this:
Carnival Friday. Piccadilly Road, Port-of-Spain.
It’s 5am. Twilight. Or what some might call, the witching hour.
Enter Moko Jumbies, their heads almost touching a violet sky, their flowing, kaleidoscopic garments catching every breeze. They seem to glide over the crowd where artist, Marissa Lee, is photographing Kambule, a re-enactment of the Canboulay Riots of 1881. Kambule, curated from the mind of national poet and treasure Eintou Pearl Springer, is a reminder of how freed Africans resisted the colonial government’s attempt to restrict certain Carnival activities.
Marissa was amazed, wondering how it took her this long to become acquainted with such an important event in Trinidad’s cultural landscape. “I watched the performers blow fire from the flambeaux, the Moko Jumbies towering over us as they passed, the sounds of tamboo bamboo everywhere,” says the St Augustine-based artist. “And it created the strangest and most fascinating atmosphere.” But it was the performance of the blue devils, those ubiquitous and most mischievous of traditional Mas characters, that really imprinted on Melissa’s camera and artistic sensibility. “I remember their energy. I saw them as creatures come to life,” she recalls, a realisation that prompted her to follow her curiosity and subsequently photograph the Next Level Devils in Paramin.
But Marissa’s work had only just begun. For this self-taught artist, it was now time to transpose the vibrancy and mystery of the blue devil onto the canvas.
And that she did. To wonderful acclaim.
In 2023, Marissa’s Baby Blue was one of 50 entries (out of 3,075) to be awarded a distinction in the Portrait Society of America’s International Portrait Competition. She followed this up in 2024 with another accolade for Whistleblower, a portrait of a young blue devil with a yellow whistle hanging from his mouth. This received a Certificate of Excellence from the same competition. “For years I would watch the awards and follow so many of the winners on social media,” she says. “Now I couldn’t believe I was there, among them. This was the first time a Caribbean artist was recognised in this way by the competition.”
I watched the performers blow fire from the flambeaux, the Moko Jumbies towering over us as they passed, the sounds of tamboo bamboo everywhere.
Picasso once said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” Marissa loved art from an early age, but her talent wasn’t nurtured sufficiently at school, leading to disappointing academic results for her final exams. Still, this setback didn’t didn’t deter Marissa; she forged ahead, believing she would eventually meet the opportunity to make her artistic mark. When she participated in workshops run by American painters Susan Lyon and Scott Burdick in North and South Carolina, she came within reach of her true potential.
“Before I saw their work, I thought I was better than I was,” Marissa reflects. “When I saw what oils could do, I knew that this was something that watercolour couldn’t give me.” Marissa describes her style as realism wrapped in impressionism. It is heavily influenced by the early 20th century American artist, John Singer Sergeant and the technical proficiency of his brushstrokes. Like a writer killing extraneous words, or a singer hitting the right note, an artist’s every brushstroke should be deliberate. “Sergeant’s brushstrokes were perfectly placed and highly realistic,” Marissa says, who prefers the alla prima technique (wet paint applied onto wet paint), as opposed to glazing (thin layers of paint applied onto dry layers of paint, popular with Old Masters). The proliferation of social media has allowed Marissa to follow and connect with artists she loves, while a love of travel has seen her tour Europe, visiting Art Basel, the renowned art fair in Switzerland, more than once.
Marissa is one of those rare phenomena, an artist who makes her living as, well, an artist. When she’s not painting, she’s thinking about painting. Her work sells well, and she occasionally runs workshops and one-day demos, opportunities to inspire a new crop of emerging artists. To them, as to herself, she says, “Push boundaries, maybe take more chances, don’t stop yourself too early. Don’t fear ruining your painting, and don’t worry about getting it right with one stroke. Sometimes, a painting just isn’t finished. Only stop when nothing more requires fixing.”
Like any artist, Marissa creates in order to find out what she thinks, to unravel a mystery, to wrestle with a question. Drawn to Carnival characters already encased in mysterious costumes, the challenge and joy for Marissa is to share her unique interpretation of these images with the world.
A selection of Marissa’s paintings can be found at Horizon Art Gallery in St James, Trinidad.
She’s planning an exhibition of her work in November/December 2025. Follow her on Instagram @marissayunglee.
