Painter Joel Chambers puts his mark on the arts

Joel Chambers utilises every chance he gets to showcase his skills as a painter and an aspiring artist. He is not afraid to walk the streets with pieces of his artwork and make sales pitches. He prints his telephone number on match boxes which he uses as his business cards.

"I use a strategy to sell my paintings because me can't afford fi have talent and still hungry. So instead of selling people paintings, I sell them ideas. So, for example, I don't walk up to people and say, 'Make me sell yuh a painting'. I say, 'Buy a painting, yuh nuh know nobody with a birthday coming up,' or something like that. Like that now, they start thinking, hence, I sell the idea," Chambers said.

The 39-year-old, who hails from Central Village in Spanish Town, St Catherine, discovered his knack for art at a very tender age. However, it wasn't until the year 2000 that he turned to art as a main source of income, when the only hustle he ever knew - selling belts, hats and other clothing items -came to an abrupt end after they were seized by the metropolitan police officers in Mandeville.

With a wife and children at home, Chambers knew he had no choice but to keep moving forward. He purchased canvas and other art supplies, reminisced about his days as a child colouring various images with crayons, and went to work.

"I was drawing from I was small, but the painting part is something I didn't really get to explore, but I buy my supplies and put down," he said.

"And when I started to do this, people make it look like it nah go nuh weh, and a tell mi seh art is not a business and it nah go take off in Jamaica. But if I was supposed to follow people I wouldn't be here," he added.

Now, more than a decade later, Chambers says his paintings are displayed in various corporate offices and are sold through leading retailers in Jamaica.

TRAVERSING THE ISLAND

Chambers, however, prefers to traverse the streets of the Corporate Area and other sections of the island to display his work first-hand.

"I start this from nothing after I lose my belt and stuff, and the aim is to go global, but right now you can even find my painting in Norman Manley Airport and all those places. When I walk and sell my paintings it may look tacky in the first half, but I have to do what I have to do until I get where I want, plus, over time you build a customer base," he said.

"Me a one of the most unique artists in the streets. The paintings are original, my thing different, and I know that I even inspire people who pretend they not seeing me, but I know I inspire them, so mi nuh worry 'bout the likes because I do it for the love," he said.

But painting is not all that Chambers is involved in. He is convinced that he can have a career in music. Calling himself the musical painter, Chambers is looking to positively impact the world with his music.

"From long time, any situation mi ina, mi just make up a song 'bout it in my head to motivate myself."

He said that although it sometimes challenging to keep his businesses going, his deep-seated passion would not allow him to give up on his dreams of impacting the world through art.

"A business is like a human being; it birth, then it creep, then it take it time to walk, so it affi go through stages. So even when business get slow we nuh worry, because we know the stages, and yuh affi nurture it, and we get some powerful words to live by, 'play your part in advancing the welfare of the whole human race'; so a that me wah do through my paintings and music."