Missing in Action: Cyril Foster, the Trinidad Sign Painter
Lost, presumed dead, the search for Trinidad sign painter Cyril Foster comes good at the temple.
Last Autumn I chanced upon a story about a local sign painter on the pages of the Daily Express newspaper from the Caribbean island of Trinidad. It's a quite literal adventure in sign painting and its author, Richard Charan, kindly accepted my request to reproduce it here for your enjoyment.
The Last Sign Painter?
By Richard Charan
On a wall in the rum drinking section of VP Gooljar’s junction shop in Barrackpore, is an unfinished mural that depicts the men who lived, worked, and died in this part of south Trinidad.
It shows them on bull carts and bison, tractors and locomotive carriages, the weighing scales and cranes, during the sugarcane harvest that employed them all.
The artist working on it had also painted the shop front promoting Mr. Gooljar’s wares—everything from Puncheon to a posey, cutlasses to coal pots—done as precisely as a photograph.
He was close to finishing the job, when the Covid 19 pandemic swept across the world in 2020, and ended life as we knew it.
With a curfew and businesses ordered closed, the painter packed up the cans, brushes and pallets, got on his bicycle, and rode away.
Since then, the people of Barrackpore have been looking for Cyril Foster.