New stamps honour Belizean artists

Traditionally, Belize’s stamps have featured pretty wildlife or events and personalities from the distant past. The latest issue, however is different.

Yasser Musa, President, NICH
“Art is about life. It is what life brings to you and how you interpret it and so I am very honoured to be associated with our stamp advisory committee.”

Yasser Musa, President of the National Institute of Culture and History, at the launch of the country’s latest release of postal stamps that for first time feature prominent Belizean artists and their works of art.

Elston Wade, Ag. Postmaster General
“As you know we have very beautiful flora and fauna in Belize and sometimes I think that that there are some of us who pay more attention to our flora and our fauna rather than to our human resources. So I decided to recommend to the stamp advisory committee that we need to showcase some of the talents of our Belizeans and we started now with the artists but for sure in the future we will see stamps depicting other talents of Belizeans.”

The twenty-five cents stamp honours the work of the late George Gabb with his well known sculpture the sleeping giant. A picture of Benjamin Nicholas and his 1981 painting, Have Some Coconut Water, is prominently featured on the seventy-five cents stamp. The two and three dollar imprints bear the works of Reuben Alexander Miguel and Manuel Villamor and their pieces of art that include Miguel’s untitled wooden sculpture and Villamor’s famous mural at the Corozal Town Hall. The thirty cents and sixty cents stamps feature the works of Louis Belisle and Pen Cayetano. The issues display Belisle’s painting of a typical day at the market and Cayetano’s painting of the original Turtle Shell Band, the group that is credited with turning the traditional punta into the electrified punta rock.

Elston Wade
“This is the first in many. As you know we publish about four sets of stamps per year so down the road we’ll feature other people. These just happen to be first.”

“They use to do their trade before the seventies, for instance. We were looking at that period and when we look at that period we decided that to pick some outstanding artists. It’s a pity we couldn’t pick more but normally the issue is a set of four stamps and because it was so difficult to pick them we decided to do six stamps instead.”