Edna Manley - Politics and Art

Politics and Art

Norman Manley entered politics, and founded the People's National Party in 1938. Although Edna Manley was hesitant at first, she quickly accepted her husband's place—and her own—in Jamaican politics. She also designed The Rising Sun logo for the People's National Party. The beginning of Jamaica's new government-—and the fall of colonialism-—was reflected in Manley's work, which at the time dealt with the cyclical, birth-and-death themes of the sun and moon. Her work was also heavily influenced by the nature that surrounded her at Nomdmi, the mountain retreat she had built with her husband.

The 1950s and 1960s were quiet times for Manley as an artist. Her husband became more involved with politics, becoming the chief minister of Jamaica in 1955. Manley's responsibilities as the wife of a politician left little time for art. In 1965, she created a statue of Paul Bogle to commemorate his partaking in Jamaica's Morant Bay Rebellion. The statue was highly controversial because it was inherently the very first Jamaican public statue that depicted a black man. Manley also returned, in her personal carvings, to the animal sculptures that she did as a young woman.

In 1969, Edna's husband (Norman Manley) had been laid to rest. He had helped Jamaica to achieve total independence from Britain and self-government by 1962. Manley's carvings during this period were very personal—-reflections on her husband's death, her pain, and sense of loss. She retreated to the mountains and created "Adios," a piece interpreted as lovers in a last embrace, and "Woman," an agonized woman in reclusion. The end of this grieving period was marked by her creation of the triumphant "Mountain Women". She had accepted the loss of her husband. "I felt that because my roots were here in Jamaica, I could survive," she told Americas. "It was my return to the world after that period of intense grief."

After creating several more profound carvings, including "Faun", "Message" and "Journey", Manley gave her carving tools away to a young Jamaican sculptor and declared that she would never work with wood again. Instead, she worked with modeled terracotta or plaster casts. During the 1970s, the major themes of Manley's work were expressions of her "grandmother," or "old woman" image, of matriarchal society, and memories of her life with her husband Norman.

Manley continued to sculpt until her death in 1987. Although a great deal of her work was intensely personal, she created a body of sculpture that embodies Jamaican culture and spirit. English novelist Sir Hugh Walpole, a collector of her work, spoke at the opening of her 1937 London show. "There is a very strange and curious spirit there and Mrs. Manley has got within that strange spirit," he remarked. "There is in Jamaica a beauty that finds its expression through her, that comes partly from the Jamaican material she uses, partly from her own individuality, and partly also, I think, from the sort of sense of beauty that the different people of Jamaica themselves possess." For Manley, expressing the beauty of Jamaica was second nature. "I carve as a Jamaican for Jamaica," she told Americas, "trying to understand our problems and living near to the heart of our people."