Roland Richardson: If you keep your eyes sort of open to whatever comes in, you’ll see all kinds of things that do not conform to your logic. Once you respond to them by acknowledging them, then they're there. And then when you come here, they bring a force with them that keeps on moving this towards at the end and it’s coming alive.

The picture that we’re doing is made of elements that I brought but which I asked my three ladies who came for this to put together on the table for me and then after they’ve done that and I‘ll proceed to change it. Okay. So, we have something quickly spontaneous.

I am the first native born artist in the history of this island so we don’t have a long artistic heritage in the Caribbean. If you take the globe, we’re situated almost on the middle of it. So which means we are exposed to a maximum amount of sun. You add to that that we have small islands that don’t hold atmosphere, so that we get whatever is happening but usually we don’t hold anything so the air is clear. And the color that manifests in our environment are extremely intense. And color is what attracts me to everything that I do. Saint Maarten is to me the most ideal spot for what I am interested in which is color.

Kaili McDonnough: Anything with color.

Roland Richardson: Yeah, color is always my subject and my painting is about 40 years, okay. And I have mainly studied color in nature and very often away from everything manmade including human but if you will—revelation, the knowledge maybe valid or the information, the inspiration, whatever revelations that I have had concerning color only going to be the fullest fruit when it applies to human being because the landscape would be spectacular, seascape or the flamboyant tree, what have you in the extraordinary, powerful as a subject but as a form of life to see an eye and the tree an eye and me and person is a whole different relationship. And so, to be able to take what I've learned from nature and see how it applies to human being that to me is the highest aspiration and challenge.

I also feel that there is something totally unexplored in general, in the relationship between the artist and the subject. We usually think that the artist selects the subject and determines and is always the principal player. I am advocating a whole different approach, if I find myself in the field in front of a tree, it drew me there.

You know I can inspire every spirit. Inspiration means when the spirit comes into you. So, if the spirit has come into you and we are catalyst, I'm very happy.