Thursday August 26,

The family of artist Seya Parboosingh has handed more than 500 pieces of her work to local galleries for sale. Parboosingh died on August 13, at her St Andrew home, at age 85.

Her niece, Jo-Anne Arnick, told The Sunday Gleaner that more than 100 of her aunt's signed paintings will be exhibited for sale at the Island Art and Framing gallery in St Andrew. Some of the pieces are framed, and were done on canvas, paper and board.

The Island Art and Framing gallery staged Parboosingh's last exhibition in July to celebrate her birthday.

Arnick also planned to give the Mutual Gallery more than 450 unsigned Seya paintings last Friday, the day her life was celebrated at the University Chapel in St Andrew. That collection also includes poetry and personal letters, three clay statues by Seya and a painting by her husband, avant garde artist Karl Parboosingh.

The paintings will be sold with the galleries getting a percentage of the profits, Arnick said. She hopes potential owners are not only art buffs.

"Seya had a special niche. They have to be people who appreciate her work," she said.

Parboosingh was born Samila Joseph in Allentown, Pennsylvania to Lebanese parents, but had lived in Jamaica since the late 1950s when she married Jamaican Karl Parboosingh. He died in 1975.

The youngest of six children, Seya Parboosingh's family are art lovers. Her sister and mentor, Helen Kahl, was a painter so too her nephew Robert Hand Jr, who is Arnick's son.

Arnick, who lives and works as a legal secretary in New York, also paints. Parboosingh studied creative writing at the University of Iowa, but became a respected artist after moving to Jamaica. She is the latest member from the golden age of Jamaican art to die. Painter Carl Abrahams (2005), potter Cecil Baugh (2005), sculptor/painter Christopher Gonzales (2008) and Albert Huie who died early this year, pre-deceased her.