Donald Diddams
The Art of Digital Art
Window to the Past
Posted on June 6, 2009
Abandoned - 2009
This window in an abandoned hurricane blow-out looked in on a tiled shower stall, with a green curtain still hanging — all lit from above through the missing roof. It is a strange feeling to come across these not-so-old ruins with reminders of the lives lived there still blowing in the breeze while the vines grow in.
Along King Street in Frederiksted
Posted on May 25, 2009
Along King Street - 2009
A young woman was relaxing in the shade of an arched arcade along the main thoroughfare of Frederiksted on the west end of St. Croix. The colors of her clothes and the building, her white headscarf, and the classic arch of the building’s arcade made for an iconic image of this old and economically depressed town.
Rum Factory Pot Still
Posted on May 20, 2009
Pot Still - 2009
This is an old pot still used in the making of rum back in the nineteeth century. With its strange gooseneck this is a somewhat unusual-looking relic of the sugar-based argibusiness of the Caribbean’s past. The image is dark and muddy to reflect my feelings about that past and some of its effects on people that continue to be passed down through the generations, even today.
For a gorgeous oil painting of an ancient sugar mill, and a description of things that took place there, check the May 20th post from Bonnie Luria, St. Croix painter and fellow blogger. Honestly, we didn’t conspire to address the same subject on the same day!
Colonial-era “Copper”
Posted on April 21, 2009
While enduring a stressful period in one of my other endeavors, it seemed a good time to work on what I hoped would be a peaceful landscape, a pretty picture. This was the result.
Copper - 2009
The object in the foreground is a colonial-era artifact known as a “copper”. These large iron containers were used to boil down the cane juice in the production of sugar during the sugar and slave-trade era in the Caribbean. So even this tranquil scene carries a mixed message from our past, and begs questions about the vestiges of that past that remain.
St. Croix — Hotel Caravelle Artwork
Mocko Jumbies
Donald Diddams 