Cox (left) and 'Angry Head' by Woody Joseph (right).

Wayne and Myrene Cox live on the north coast of Jamaica. Many of the works from their collection are currently on view in the exhibition Intuitives III at the National Gallery of Jamaica. Here, Wayne Cox discusses why he collects Jamaican art with Dr. Jonathan Greenland, executive director of the National Gallery of Jamaica.

You have a number of works in the current 'Intuitives III' exhibition at the National Gallery. Could you tell us something about them?

I think they are some of the more intense pieces of the various artists that we collect. In the case of Brother Everald Brown, for instance, you have the wonderful self-portrait called Man Go Forward, where he carries the staff of his Ethiopian Orthodox ministry in one hand and a mystical leaf in the other. And it seems to symbolise his two worlds: the first where he has to organise religion, and second, the spiritual life of the world itself as exemplified by the leaf. Symbolically and literally, he brings forth spiritual wisdom from both worlds.

That painting in many ways exemplifies the pattern of the intuitive artists: they are conscience bearers, they bring forth wisdom from a variety of sources and try to provide a way for the country itself to have a platform for its growth and development.

Why do you collect Jamaican intuitive art?

It gives me a window into a culture, and an opportunity to learn about a culture. My wife and I started travelling to Jamaica and we could see there was a very vibrant culture. That was in late 1985. We found that by meeting artists it was a way to learn about the inner life of the country - perhaps much more intensely than one could by any other means.

Do you collect the work of self-taught artists from any other country?

Briefly, I collected intuitive art from Haiti. I actually had much more access to learn about Haitian art and view it and collect it through friends in a gallery in Washington D. C. which I often visited. But it was really more of a way to learn about that type of art in general. In fact, I think it was preparation for seriously collecting Jamaican art.

Do you see a strong difference between intuitive art and more mainstream art?

Well, if you think of the more modern work, there are many connections. You wouldn't think so on the surface because there aren't many formal connections but in many ways I think they are grappling with the same type of issues.

Take the Jamaican artist Leonard Daley. One of the things he grappled with was his own sense of identity and he played with it in his works. He would create a work like Jesus John Crow where he self-identifies with both Christ and the John Crow as a servant figure. It's not in this particular exhibition, but it is a very interesting work. Probing identity is one of the things that go on very often in the contemporary art world, and here a guy like Leonard Daley is doing it with certainly the same level of sophistication. So there is some overlap.

But I think the real value of the intuitive artists is that they don't feel a burden to create works that are reflective of art history, nor do they feel a burden to have formal newness in their expression - they don't need to always come up with new styles or means of expression.

So what they are really trying to do, I think, is to present their encounter with their own world. When they are very good, they do it with this extreme amount of metaphoric inventiveness and artistic ingenuity. When they are at their best they are very good indeed. They are also providing us with an awful lot of wisdom in the process.

Do you have a favourite work in this exhibition?

I don't have a favourite work, but there are some that are particularly interesting. There is a beautiful work by Leonard Daley that he did right after a revered woman from his neighbourhood was murdered in her home. And he was reflecting on this and at the time some foreign people were thinking: 'Gosh, is Jamaica still a safe place and should we continue to be here?' And he did a painting of an English woman thinking about what it would be like to return home called The English Woman and her dog dreaming of sailing with the Union Jack. It's characteristic of the type of thought process that Daley went through: life's troubles would show up in his works and sometimes in a very elegant way.

And of course Brother Everald Brown. I knew very, very closely and visited him many times a year for many years. Almost any of his works would be very high on my list to point out to people who are just beginning their exploration of Jamaican Intuitive Art.

Would you say your collecting is a compulsion, love or business?

Well it's never been a business! There was an exhibition of our collection done some 10 years back in the United States and all but one of those works remain in our collection. We've never intended that the works be available for sale. We occasionally sold a work but very, very rarely. We mainly intend the collection to be a repository of works for study, so what we did is not only collect, we also documented the works with photography and audiotape interviews and later we did interviews on videotape. It was a strange idea that my wife and I had that two people could make a contribution to the knowledge of the culture of a country if they simply devoted a certain amount of time to it, year in year out. And that's what we attempted to do.

In the exhibition, there is a video from your collection of the artist Errol McKenzie.

It is a video of Errol McKenzie and his home. This is a remarkable building that he created stone by stone. It is a spiritual yard in which he has installed many, many pieces of sculpture and actually the walls themselves are embedded with spiritual forms. So it is really his space to show off his spiritual ideas. In fact he is so taken with these ideas that he felt his entire home should be built in a manner that expressed them. So the video gives a glimpse of McKenzie and some of the amazing sculptures and forms he has created.

Can you tell us about McKenzie's painting, 'Jesus Married to Satan: 30,000 Acres of Dead Food Kingdom of Darkness?'

I know a lot about this piece because I have done video work of him explaining exactly what the work means. It sounds very confusing but it's not confusing at all. If you look at the work it is like a cross-section: if you took the body, sliced it down the middle and this body was infested with evilness coursing through it, and bad seeds, and valves pumping out this level of evil, then this is what you would see. It is a sort of warning painting that says: 'Look if we don't get on the right side of life then this is what we will certainly look like inside'. It's actually a very easy to understand painting but very stark and confusing at first flush. It's all part of his spiritual system. He painted a companion work that was the opposite to this. It said: If one is attuned to the positive spiritual forces of the Moon, the Moon Mother, Christ - these various things he thinks of as positive forces - then this is what you would see. It is a beautiful golden painting that shows what the inside life of such a person would be like. His real spiritual message is one of positiveness and the power of redemption.

One of my favourite works in this exhibition is a work from your collection by the artist Vincent Atherton called Good to Counteract the Devil, could you tell me anything about this piece?

I saw this work perched on the bench at his carving hut and he told me: "That one good to counteract the devil... upon duty outside to watch the house... he'll watch your house. Afraid. Afraid of that spirit." And so I acquired that work and it did assume the same duties at my house. Vincent Atherton got another spirit figure that he put in its place afterwards. It reminds me a lot of African power figures.

I see it as having the same intentions: these are spirit figures designed to have a certain amount of power for protection. Certain effigy figures in Africa were used for those protective purposes, other effigy figures were used for other purposes. I would say it is a kindred spirit.

I know you do a lot of grassroots collecting, in that you go out and meet the artists, you visit them, rather than sitting back and waiting for works to come to you. What was the most interesting experience?

Some of the most pleasurable visits we made were to Woody Joseph. In order to get to his yard you had take off your shoes, cross over the Wagwater River, boulder by boulder, walk up this beautiful hillside path up to his yard. And once you got to his yard you see this sign on his house saying: 'Woody - Human Creation. Peace and Justice'. Simply making that trek you knew you were entering a spiritual yard and you were going to encounter a man who exuded wisdom and created works that were so loving in their intention and so remarkable in their execution. It was always a joy to visit Woody Joseph.

Was there a work that you wanted but was difficult to get hold of?

We never approached things in that fashion. We basically visit the artists, what works they had and were willing to part with and we were interested in we purchased. There was one work, however, that I coveted for many, many years. It was a carving that Doc Willamson did of Bob Marley immediately after Bob's death. It was a homage. Doc Williamson kept that piece for almost twenty years and he treasured it greatly. It was only in his very last years, when he realized he wouldn't be able to care for it much longer, that he decided to make it available. I was very fortunate to be the one he was willing to sell it to.

Do you have any advice for a young person who is interested in collecting intuitive art?

It is an extraordinary experience, particularly if you do it in the same way Myrene and I did which was to go visit the artists. You learn the country, you come away with a lot more wisdom than you started with that day, you go home with a great deal of humility having encountered people with often very meager means doing heroic work. In a way you think of it as a service and it certainly is. We would recommend it to anyone.

Are there any young intuitive artists that you have your eye on at the moment?

We haven't encountered any that are very young, but that doesn't mean they aren't out there. We've been very busy in the past few years doing a renovation of our house so we haven't been about and around the island as much as we have in the past. But we are about to finish these various projects round here so we'll be out scouting again. Hopefully, I'll have a fuller answer for you in a year or two. There're out there but we have to spend more time looking for them.

'Intuitives III' is on view at the National Gallery of Jamaica through November 4. Original works are available at the National Gallery Shop. Please call us for more details at 922 1561 or email us at natgalja@cwjamaica.com.