Frangipani Art Gallery
By Rekke Editorial
Marilda Weatherhead arrived in Barbados in 1965, sent by her father from Caracas to learn English. The plan was one year. She stayed, fell in love with a Barbadian she met at a party three months after arriving, and married him. His mother said it wouldn't last. That was fifty-eight years ago. She has not been back to Venezuela in thirty years. "Barbados has given me my whole life," she says.
She did not paint in Venezuela, though her mother and aunts both painted. Her mother's work was devotional: flowers and saints in the Catholic tradition, the kind of painting that required months of formal study before touching a canvas. In the late 1980s, a friend invited Marilda to join a class led by Indrani Whittingham, a Guyanese artist who had settled in Barbados and started teaching. Whittingham's Tuesday morning group is credited in Barbadian art circles with seeding the current generation of working artists on the island. Marilda had never picked up a brush before. She has not stopped since. The gallery came from the same impulse.
Named after her favorite flower on the island, Frangipani Art Gallery is located at Haymans Market in St. Peter and shows work by around forty of Barbados's working artists. Haymans has the kind of atmosphere that encourages you to wander in, and the gallery fits the spirit of the place: the space is small but open and airy, the art displayed in a way that gives each piece room without ever feeling sparse. Color hits you immediately: coastal scenes, chattel houses in pink and terracotta, market vendors, cane fields, fishing boats. Much of the work carries a gentle nostalgia for a quieter Barbados, one that still exists but is harder to find than it once was. It is an unmistakably Caribbean room, and an easy one to spend time in. Large oils hang on the walls and on freestanding grid panels; smaller acrylics painted on wooden plates and cross-sections of tree trunk sit on shelves; coral stone assemblages with embedded shells and sea glass stand on side tables alongside Earthworks pottery, batik work, photography on canvas, and books on Barbados. The space is arranged loosely by subject, with seascapes near seascapes and market scenes near market scenes, which gives the eclecticism some structure.
The variety reflects in part the gallery's roster of artists, but also Marilda's own practice. "I don't have a style," she says. "I like to try everything." She works mostly in oil. "With acrylic, it dries so fast," she says. "With oil, you can keep making changes, you can add on, you can take off." Her work ranges from tropical florals painted on reclaimed wooden dishes to large-scale fish studies in oil and sculptural coral stone pieces.
One of the most striking pieces hangs on the gallery's interior door: a canvas on a carved iron scroll hanger, showing a horse and cart silhouetted against a deep coral sunset, with palms and a flamboyant tree to either side. She calls it Sunset Ride, after the horse and donkey carts she remembers from the west coast roads when she first arrived. The cart in the painting is empty.
The artists on the walls came to Marilda, not the other way around. She had run a previous gallery at Sugar Cane Club for around five years; Haymans is where she started again after COVID. Since then, she has been approached by more artists than she has room to show, and there is now a waiting list. Work is almost entirely by Bajan artists; Marilda is deliberate about this. She selects based on what she thinks visitors will like, and pieces are replaced as they sell.
The gallery sells more than paintings. Alongside the oils, acrylics, and pastels there are clay sculptures, Earthworks pottery on consignment, batik pieces, photography on canvas, coral stone works, Colombian jewelry, books, prints, postcards, and handmade fridge magnets. Pricing is set deliberately below the markup of most galleries on the island. Marilda takes a smaller commission than competitors, on principle. For visitors wanting to take a painting home, the gallery does not ship internationally but will roll canvases and package them for luggage instead.
Her work has also traveled further than the gallery walls. Marilda's paintings were featured on Virgin Holidays flights to Barbados; a passenger photographed them on board and sent her the picture. Whether they are still there, she isn't sure.
Marilda hosts the Under the Sun Festival, an annual art event she started during her husband's time managing Almond Beach in St. Peter, now held at Haymans Market. Artists gather under one roof and sell directly, often at prices lower than they otherwise charge, and visitors can meet them in person. A larger Caribbean-wide edition is planned for early 2027.
Every Wednesday morning, Marilda is at the gallery herself, ten until noon, painting alongside the group she has been meeting since the eighties. Sixty years after arriving for one year, she shows no signs of stopping.
Helpful Hint
Frangipani sits inside Haymans Market, which is worth a longer visit in its own right. Wyndham's serves great coffee, and there are a wide variety of food options — the pizza next door is particularly good. Easy to make an afternoon of it.