Leonard Daley
(c. 1930–2006)
BornSaint Catherine Parish, Jamaica
ActiveKingston, Jamaica
BiographyWhirls of animals, humans, and spirits fill Leonard Daley’s paintings. With heavy brushstrokes and forms flowing between abstraction and realism, he created hallucinatory works that frequently drew on his own subconscious and the local myth, culture, and ecology of Jamaica. The “John Crow,” a much-derided scavenging vulture, regularly appears in these vortexes as a sort of self-portrait, as do more enigmatic creatures amid distorted faces. The spontaneous feel of the paintings reflects Daley’s automatic process. He worked with scraps of plywood and oil-drum lids for surfaces as well as canvas, as he developed densely layered images that appear to pulse with the movement and energy of life.Daley was born around 1930, grew up in the parish of Saint Catherine in Jamaica, and lived in Kingston before returning to a more rural home. His jobs included being a taxi driver and a cook. Although he started creating art in the 1960s, no works prior to 1979 are known to survive. His practice extended to his self-made house: paintings covered the walls of his small home in the hills just outside of Kingston.
He came to prominence with his inclusion in the 1987 exhibition Fifteen Intuitives at the National Gallery of Jamaica, which featured self-taught artists from across the country. Daley was quoted in the catalogue explaining his practice: “I close my eyes and pray a lot. . . . Sometimes I sit down and look at the plain wall, and I can’t penetrate it, and so I will use some water in my mouth, and spew it on the wall and whatever way it dries it comes out as a picture. . . . I read it and the next thing I look at the sunset and I look at the moon and sometimes when I am concerned about certain situations I meditate.” As Daley was one of the Jamaican “Intuitives,” his work was recognized as part of a wider formation of Jamaica’s cultural identity in the wake of its independence from the United Kingdom in 1962. Daley died in 2006, his work having been exhibited both nationally and internationally.
Allison C. Meier, 2025
Text written as part of “Rethinking Biography,” an initiative supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).