About Us
Maracas Valley Studio Productions presents the creative and intellectual work borne of the partnership of artist Rex Dixon and scholar, writer and filmmaker Patricia Mohammed. While showcasing the individual and collaborative work of the each, the site is also a commercial space for presenting artwork and publications, while inviting inquiry and sales.
Rex Dixon was born in London, England in 1939. He worked as the Visual Arts Officer at Midlands Art Centre, Birmingham from 1972-1977, then taught full time on the BA course in painting at the New University of Ulster, Belfast.
In 1984 he crossed the Atlantic to teach painting at the Edna Manley School for the Visual Arts, Jamaica where he worked until 1999. From that year onwards painting has been his full time occupation.
Trained in a number of art schools in the UK, Dixon has explored stylistic variations in painting. During the late 1990s his work began to take on an expressionistic figurative style. This work carried on briefly into Trinidad and then veered into a form of hard edged painting.
In 2020 his work continued to develop around the use of words and an expressionistic style of painting.
In 1994 Patricia Mohammed completed a PhD in gender and development studies at the Institute of Social Studies in Den Haag, The Netherlands and arrived in Jamaica to take up a post as the Head of the Mona Unit, Institute for Gender and Development Studies, University of the West Indies. During her doctoral studies she had also used the opportunity to work with an artist in Den Haag exploring contemporary art.
Dixon and Mohammed met through the art circuit of gallery shows in Jamaica and there began both a close personal and collaborative relationship. Mohammed expanded her repertoire to include cultural studies with a focus on visual intelligence.
They have co-written and published illustrated books, produced films with Mohammed as director, and managed Dixon’s numerous exhibitions and prolific production of works on canvas and paper.
Dixon and Mohammed were married in 1995 and lived in Jamaica until 2002. They moved to Trinidad and Tobago where Mohammed continued her work with the University of the West Indies, this time at the same Institute for Gender and Development Studies, on the St Augustine campus.
They were drawn to the fertile and lush Maracas Valley in St Joseph, Trinidad, and moved into a wooden bungalow built along typical Caribbean vernacular architecture on an acre of mature tropical garden. On this site they fashioned and built a large studio for Rex, the first studio space that was completely his own, also in the style of the house.
From this pleasant location they continued to work and negotiate the global, regional and local artistic, academic and film worlds. They blended this tropical experience with a dedicated sojourn each year in Northern Ireland’s Antrim coast where they own a cottage in Cairncastle, another beautiful location that ensured a movement away from regional provinciality and adding another layer of experiences that have fuelled their creative partnership.
