Tag: seven skeletons

6: The Art of Erasure
All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.
Toni Morrison

When future generations look back at the Minnis family and their impact on Bahamian art they will most likely start with the “Creation’s Grace” exhibition held at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB) in 2014. That future impact makes it more official Bahamian art history than art show.

However, it seems this was a family retrospective only in the sense that the family members included were all Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Out of all the things that have happened to me since I left the Witness faith, this is among the worst. It felt like this exhibition was a real attempt not only to write me out of the family story, but to wipe me out of existence.

To that Bahamian from the future, how will they even know that I was ever here?

I’m not saying that I should have had the same amount of wall space at the exhibition as my admittedly more prolific sisters — what I am saying is that I should have been there somewhere. To completely exclude me, a member of the Minnis family, from a Minnis family retrospective – when my paintings were already in the building and in the National Collection – demands some kind of explanation.

If there is no valid curatorial reason for leaving me out, then the NAGB was doing Jehovah’s Witness dirty work.

Yet, no explanation was in sight, not even a bio page, and for the cherry on top, there was never even a single attempt made by anyone involved in the exhibition to contact me. No phone calls, no text, no email. Nada. It’s as if the NAGB was trying to be more Jehovah than the Elders in a Witness congregation.

And that’s the whole problem — if there is no valid curatorial reason for leaving me out, then the NAGB was actually doing the Witness’ dirty work for them.

It’s downright shameful for a national institution to even appear to be punishing me for leaving the Jehovah’s Witness cult. And if it turns out that this is what they were actually doing; well then.

1.

In early 2025 I had the chance to speak and interview the three people in charge of the NAGB at the time of this exhibition:
- Stan Burnside – Chairman
- Amanda Coulson – Executive Director and Curator
- John Cox – Chief Curator
My goal in talking to them was to try to understand how a group of non-Witnesses could end up creating something that, even now, seems as Witness to the core as this. Did they justify my exclusion by some means that I did not see? Or didn’t want to see? In other words, were they right to leave me out?

Then Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. Perry Christie with his wife Bernadette Christie on tour with Eddie Minnis and Amanda Coulson at the Minnis Family Retrospective at the NAGB. Photo by Peter Ramsay

Burnside distanced himself from the final exhibition product. According to his version of events he requested and expected to see an Eddie Minnis solo retrospective and was as surprised as anyone when the show was extended to the broader Minnis Family – and discovered even later that I was being excluded.

Nobody came back to me and said, instead of the retrospective, we’re gonna be doing this or that… Until it was almost hanging time. Really hard to change at that point.

He felt that he couldn’t force a course change so late in the process and his regret surfaces in his awkward mention of me in the “Creation’s Grace” introduction.

Cox began as the chief curator but soon left the NAGB to work for Bahamar. He doesn’t remember spending much time on the project compared to other exhibitions, like the Amos Ferguson retrospective, where he can recall his strategic decisions. He also put distance between himself and the final exhibition.

I just don’t want to say I had nothing to do with that because I feel that’s a cop-out because I was the head curator. I was leaving, but I don’t recall the point at which the decision was made to include the family.

Coulson confirmed that Cox was not that involved in preparing the exhibition and because he left the gallery in late 2013, she had to play double duty as both the executive director and the curator of the show.

While she is apologetic about my exclusion, as are the other two principals, and thinks that I am “owed a conversation” about what happened, she is at the same time proud of the finished product, especially given the time constraints, and defended her choices which included extending the scope to include the family and also leaving me out.

I’m not ashamed of the show. I don’t think it was a bad show. I think it held together. I think it did what it should do for kids coming into the NAGB, to learn about this artist and to learn about … his artistic legacy. And I think it did that.

Let’s have that conversation.

2.

Coulson repeatedly mentioned to me that one of the reasons why she felt justified in leaving me out was because I was absent from The Bahamas. During our interview she told me that:

There is something about being part of the community and digging in, right? Whether you chose not to dig in here for any reason, again, those are very sensitive issues and you might have all the reasons in the world, but you have been absent.

Her argument was that since I was not a “part of the community”, I had no right to be included. She put it this way:

You get to be included in something if you show up for something and you don’t just get to be included [just] because.

In our discussion Coulson articulated her idea of what a Bahamian artist is and should be. It involves the following three pillars:
- Physical presence.
- Documented record.
- An active ongoing practice, specifically painting.
As mentioned, I failed the first point because I lived abroad and rarely returned home. She claimed that there was nothing in the records available to her that documented anything that I had done, or at least nothing that she was able to find. The third strike against me was that I hadn’t maintained my painting practice in over a decade and this just did not compare to the rest of my family. She added:

I also try to research people and I didn’t see you as having such a deep practice.

There is truth in this. I haven’t been home in a long time. I live in Canada. My artistic practice has shrivelled since 2012.

First, though, a question: Why did I go away to begin with?

I left Nassau in 2004 to get a bachelor’s degree, and then went on to pursue a Master’s, which I completed in 2010.

Going abroad to get that paper is a rite of passage for many Bahamians. My father, Burnside and Cox all went abroad chasing degrees and their artistic practices were richer for it. Coulson herself did the same. Was I expected to be in two places at the same time?

Now, were “Creation’s Grace” staged today in 2026, I would likely agree with her views about my absence, but when work really began on that show in 2013, this argument was already a stretch.

Let me take a look at my own record for a moment.

We can start with my Masters degree in history. Far from neglecting my homeland, I wrote my thesis on – wait for it – the Fergusons of Farm Road, the groundbreaking Bahamian radio soap opera co-created by my aunt Jeanne Thompson and Jamaican writer Sonia Mills. The only such study ever done. It was only because of my research that actual audio of the show, thought lost forever, was found.

Earlier in 2010, I wrote a major critical essay and staged a debate with Dr. Nicolette Bethel on her “Day of Absence” concept — at the NAGB no less. This was an event that was moderated by the late great Jackson Burnside III.

I followed this up in 2011 with a play that I wrote, acted in and produced, called “The Cabinet,” directed by Ian Strachan. It was a political comedy described by poet Sonia Farmer as “our very own Bahamian “Animal Farm.”” It ran for 12 shows between various venues in Nassau and Freeport, one of which sold-out the main Dundas stage.

On the left – Poster for the first run of my 2011 play “The Cabinet.” On the right – A scene from the play at the Dundas Centre in Nassau with Matthew Wildgoose as Kendrick Johnson and me as Jerome Cartwright.

And then there is my poetry, some of which was published in Tongues of the Ocean in 2009, The Caribbean Writer in 2010 and Anthurium in 2011.

In 2012, for the lead-up to the 2015 Pan-Am games in Toronto, I represented the whole damn country by painting the Bahamian entry in the “Play me, I’m Yours” street piano installation.

The piano was placed in the absolute prime location of “Union friggin’ Station” – the second-busiest railway station in North America – for a few weeks. My piano was probably seen by millions, for at the time around “200,000 Torontonians and tourists pass[ed] by every day.”

The Bahamas Piano for the “Play Me, I’m Yours” city installation in Toronto, Canada. Photo credits from top left to right: David Miller, Mademoiselle Vanessa Petey, Dominika M and Dan Pearce

For someone to say in 2014 that I was absent from the community or hadn’t contributed anything to the culture in a long time is baffling. How much more was I expected to do?

Yes, many of my achievements are not about painting, but why do they have to be? “Creation’s Grace” easily handled my father’s multimedia, both his Pot Luck cartoons and music were given space, even my sister Shan had a poem of hers included, which makes the case against my various projects very hard to maintain.

Coulson’s claim that she wasn’t able to find anything that I had done online or in print is very hard to believe. Mainly because my own websites, including one devoted to “The Cabinet” play, were all up at the time.

There is also the pesky fact that telephones, email and Facebook all existed in 2013. I was not that hard to reach. And given that the Bahamas piano was only a year old – and I had just represented the country internationally – it makes her argument seem petty.

Also, Coulson’s idea of “being here” is positively pre-internet. For example, in Jackson Burnside’s opening remarks at the “Day of Absence” debate in 2010 he said regarding Dr. Bethel and myself:

What is fascinating today is they could be anywhere and still be here, getting in the business of “Who we are and What we are all about.”

Up until I staged “the Cabinet,” my writing was so focused on the Bahamas that I regularly engaged other artists like Bethel and the late Burnside.

Yes, I wasn’t living in the Bahamas when the “Creation’s Grace” exhibition was being worked on, but with the list of work I had done from 2009 – 2012 to say that I had completely disappeared is not a credible argument and takes what-have-you-done-for-me-lately to an extreme.

Even if you buy that I was not in the country enough, or had not done enough art while earning degrees in the years leading up to “Creation’s Grace,” we need to think about the exhibit itself. Was this a showing of recent works or a retrospective? If it was about recent work alone then this thinking would have slightly more traction. But it wasn’t. This fact alone makes the whole where-have-you-been argument invalid.

Ultimately, the most compelling argument in favour of my contributions to the Bahamian community and presence within it comes from Coulson herself.

2016 Teachers’ Packet – produced by the NAGB, teaching future generations about foremost Bahamian artists.

I found a “Teacher’s Packet” that was produced by the NAGB in 2016. It discussed my “Famous Faces” show in a condensed version of the “Bahamian Modernism” essay written by Dr. Erica James. It also includes my bio alongside other prominent Bahamian artists, from John Cox to Dorman Stubbs. According to the introduction by Coulson the purpose for producing this packet was:

“to make current and future generations aware of some of The Bahamas’ foremost artists and art movements.”

So according to Coulson – I am amongst The Bahamas’ “foremost artists” that she wanted “future generations to be aware of.”

This of course, begs the question – how can I be a foremost Bahamian artist that future generations should know about if I can’t be included in my own family’s retrospective?

The gods of irony demand that I further quote Coulson as she says:

“I have been both delighted and saddened to see the acclaim with which our talented compatriots are embraced overseas yet still struggle for recognition in our Bahamian backyard.”

It’s really something when you understand how and why that struggle for recognition happens.

3.

Both Coulson and my father defend my exclusion on the basis of theme. In a 2015 email my father told me that:

The main factor in your exclusion was that it was a Realism exhibition. Your paintings did not fit that category.

In the next sentence he added, “Another factor was your disassociation [from the Jehovah’s Witnesses],” but let’s set that smoking gun aside for now.

I asked Coulson about his thematic argument and she went further saying that the exhibition was really about Bahamian nostalgia and that this concept was not present in my work.

The concept for the show was kind of, like, this nostalgia, this capturing of the Bahamas a certain way, this seeing how people live.

So not only was the way I painted too far afield of the family, but apparently the content of my work was also not fitting the vibe.

If this logic actually held, my father’s early work, which was much more impressionistic, would not have been included either. But the show was a retrospective. The whole point was to show how his style changed over time. Just because he tightened his technique and headed towards greater realism was no reason to take out his wonderful early pieces.

Early impressionistic work by Eddie Minnis. On the left: Down to Earth, 1973; on the right: Bay Street 1978

Similarly, my work is not all abstract expressionism. The pieces of mine that are in the National Collection are from the “Famous Faces of Nassau” show, a joint exhibition that I did with Jace McKinney in 2004. The show was all portraits that, due to the concept, needed to be recognizable. How can it be said that this work wasn’t some degree of realism?

In her essay on Bahamian Modernism, Dr. Erica James – former NAGB director, Coulson’s immediate predecessor and the curator who purchased my work for the National Collection – wrote about the “Famous Faces of Nassau,” saying:

McKinney and Minnis wanted to deconstruct notions of fame in the country and used the medium of portraiture to monumentalize both ‘official’ famous figures such as politicians, preachers etc., right along with ‘unofficial’ figures – beggars, prostitutes, street urchins, baseheads and others going through their individual struggles.

My paintings from the 2004 “Famous Faces of Nassau” show where street people and the elite hung on the walls as equals. On the left “Mizpah Glinton” in the NAGB’s National Collection. On the right “Perry Christie” in the collection of the Rt. Hon. Perry Christie. This was the only wall pairing that I was adamant about.

In other words, “Famous Faces” was doing exactly what Coulson celebrated in my family’s work:

These people and their dwellings are never frowned upon, rather they are given a dignity and grace that belies their often humble existences.

The theme angle is noticeably absent in Coulson’s arguments for including son-in-law Ritchie Eyma. She says that “Eyma’s approach is complementary but also noticeably different.” I find it curious that the same line of thought was not applied to me. My work is also “noticeably different” and shares a similar dark palette with Eyma. There are many other “complementary” elements to be found. If, in fact, you look for them.

You can draw a direct line between my “Famous Faces” show and the portrait commissions my sisters have done, or to my father’s many Pot Luck caricatures.

I find it odd that none of my sisters’ bust-style portraits, of which there are many, were exhibited – even as some of my father’s own portrait work made it in.

The family tradition of portraits. From Left to Right – Portrait of my grandmother, Sybil Thompson by Nicole Minnis, 1986 in the collection of Ellison Thompson; Pot Luck cartoon with a caricature of Sir Randol Fawkes circa 1979 by Eddie Minnis; Myles Munroe portrait from the Famous Faces of Nassau show 2004 by Ward Minnis.

A cynic, such as myself, might even say that the exhibition was curated in a way that hides possible links between my work and that of my family.

One of those links is the various forms our art has taken. Like my father, I’ve worked in multiple forms. My acting and theatre work mirror his time as Samuel on the Fergusons of Farm Road — an aspect of his career that appears nowhere in Coulson’s essay or in the bio she wrote for him.

But go a layer deeper, past the portraits and to the intent behind them, and there is a direct connection between my art and my father’s early period, or as I have described it, his first phase. John Cox described it like this:

I kind of feel philosophically, Ward Minnis is more connected to the social realist in Eddie Minnis

For example, my satirical play “the Cabinet”, while very different from anything my father did, was, at its core, the spirit of Pot Luck manifested on stage. The “Famous faces” show, by placing the powerful next to every day street people shared a connection to my father’s first phase work by asking pointed questions about Bahamian society.

The social realism connection that we share is obscured by the retrospective’s obsession with his “gem-like canvases” at the expense of his over-the-hill paintings that show the full mess, the often vibrant dilapidation, of Bahamian life.

It is true that the idea of “Bahamian nostalgia” — an aching for an idealized and romanticized past — is absent from my work, but to be honest, it’s also absent from my father’s phase one work as well.

To force the full career arc of Eddie Minnis into the idea of Bahamian nostalgia is to reject not only all of the strands that would tie us together, but it also completely misses the point of his early work.

4.

The same misreading is seen everywhere in Creation’s Grace. In the essay that opens the catalogue, Coulson describes my father’s work by saying that “More often than not, these images are unpopulated.” She describes a concept – the landscape of the imagination – that she claims is defined by Eddie Minnis.

Generally the landscape of the imagination is unpopulated, there are no smoking Jitneys bumping down the potholed roads or groups of people gathering for conversation or altercation. You have, in fact, just imagined a painting by Mr. Eddie Minnis

While it is true that he did paint unpopulated landscapes, to claim that this defines his body of work is … a choice.

The retrospective itself is the proof. There are about as many pieces with people in them as there are ‘unpopulated’ ones.

The allegedly unpopulated images of Eddie Minnis. On the left, “Balcony House” 1985 and on the right, “Hay Street Yard” 1984.

In an essay by Nastassia Pratt, published in 2021 in Caribbean InTransit, titled “Architectural Translations in Bahamian Fine Art” she cites his “Hay Street Yard” painting by referring specifically to the people within it. While she describes it as a tourist-driven, commercially oriented view of ‘island living,’ her whole point is that the painting shows:

black children playing in the yard, the washerwoman hanging clothes on the line and brightly-painted clapboard houses lifted up on concrete blocks in the dusty yard.

On the one hand, we have Coulson describing his work as mostly devoid of people, while on the other we have Pratt, referencing his work for the very things that are supposedly absent. Which is it?

One of his iconic canvases is “Balcony House”, the genesis of which was described in detail in the “Ting an’ Ting” documentary. This painting stands out to me for its strong figure work throughout the composition. There are nearly a dozen distinct figures in multiple groupings, any of which could have been expanded and enlarged into a painting by Nicole or Shan.

To have both of these canvases in the retrospective hanging alongside many more that show the daily lives of Bahamians, and then to describe his work as mainly “unpopulated” is to grossly misunderstand his body of work and, on a certain level, not even to see it.

While Pratt is correct to describe the commercial nature of his canvases, I believe that she too misses the point. It is a corrosive influence to be sure, but art and commercial interests have to co-exist. For Eddie Minnis, as a Black Bahamian man, the very act of surviving as an artist in that time and place, was itself a political statement whether his canvases were or not.

Eddie Minnis painting in the community. His office hours were always open.

The community was his studio. He worked amongst the people, in the Bahamian sun, with random people standing over his shoulder offering unsolicited critiques in real time. This was a practice that required tremendous courage.

In “Ting an’ Ting,” Charlie Bahama spoke glowingly about his first exposure to Eddie Minnis – seeing him painting on the street on his way home from school, in the same spot, for weeks on end.

For my father, the fact that he was making it as an artist, and was visible in the community doing so, was a true middle finger to everyone who said he couldn’t do it.

The Bahamas had no framework to describe what he was doing, and in many ways, we still don’t.

Burnside picked up this theme in his introductory remarks – calling it a “Profile in Courage.” He spoke to me about my father’s career in reverent terms:

[Eddie] was such a fearless adventurer. … in those days, it was an impossible task for anyone to think that they could make a living from art. And for him to take that plunge … took a tremendous amount of his soul. … And what he did as a courageous artist is what all of the artists who came behind him stood on. He allowed them to stand on his shoulders and create … But he had a major, major part just by virtue of the sacrifice that he made.

The radical nature of his practice, and the courage required to live it, receives no coverage in Coulson’s catalogue essay and bio – although she does touch on it in her “Ting an’ Ting” interviews more than a decade later.

Coulson’s writings about Pot Luck also severely undersell and undercut the courage that was required to produce it. She writes:

political cartoons such as these consequently played the very important role of the King’s jester: the only person allowed to poke holes using humour and wit, in the ruler’s facade without fear of reprisal.

The idea that he was “allowed” to produce Pot Luck by the good graces of the Pindling regime is laughable. “Ting an’ Ting” discussed several of his songs that were banned from ZNS, the lone government-controlled radio station at the time — this is the very definition of “reprisal.”

For example, when I staged “The Cabinet” in 2011, I was personally terrified of how the play, which essentially accused the sitting Prime Minister of treason, would be received. I can only imagine the boldness required to do the same during the PLP years. Speaking out and criticizing the powerful in The Bahamas invites risk, and Pot Luck skewered everyone, not just the ruling party. A fact that invalidates Coulson’s “court jester” framing. My father spoke about this himself when he wrote:

For it is only by being honest with ourselves, that we will be able to see what is wrong, bring it to the attention of the nation and correct it.

A jester simply entertains the court but Pot Luck’s original intention was not just to entertain, but to correct.

In short, Coulson did not ignore the radical side of Eddie Minnis. His cartoons are in the catalogue. His populated canvases were on the walls. His own words are reproduced in the very book she edited. All the pieces were there. She was either unable or unwilling to put them together.

5.

Coulson articulated a final argument for my exclusion, which essentially boils down to the question: who actually is a part of the Minnis family?

In the context of the “Creation’s Grace” retrospective she told me that “the show wasn’t about biology.” She continued:

The show was about your father’s impact on a community, and what his version of painting, what that engendered — who inherited that particular branch of painting.

She said that she could have followed this line of reasoning in “Creation’s Grace” and allowed other artists into the exhibition to show this connection. She added that this thread was better explored a few years later in March 2018 with the show “Traversing the Picturesque.”

And fair enough, Creation’s Grace could have been a different show and it certainly would have been had there been other artists included, but the only thing that we actually have is the exhibition that we got. So let us focus our attention there.

Take a moment to reflect on this idea that the “Creation’s Grace: Minnis Family Retrospective” — “wasn’t about biology.” It’s a stunning claim, because a family retrospective is by definition, at least partly, about biology. The word “family” is doing a good deal of the organizing work. It’s in the title. Nicole and Shan are there, not because their work is that similar to Eddie Minnis’, but because they are his daughters.

Coulson had to provide a curatorial argument for Ritchie Eyma’s inclusion in the exhibition – by saying that his approach is “complementary but noticeably different” – because he isn’t biological family. His inclusion needs an explanation, Nicole and Shan need none. Coulson asserts, for shifting reasons, that he has become “a part of the Minnis family and its artistic heritage.” In the catalogue it’s because he is Shan’s “soulmate” and on the NAGB website it’s because he has exhibited together with them since 2005.

Biology was the floor for the included artists — except, of course, when it came to me. As Eddie’s son, with work in the National Collection, I clearly met that simple biological requirement. Surely there was enough room on the walls for one canvas to represent my painting career and she could have written a line more expansive than the parenthetical, “also an artist and a writer,” that she put into my father’s bio.

I would instead argue that if I were included in the show it would have made the Minnis family seem even more outstanding as it demonstrates that all of Eddie’s children have the artistic impulse, whether directly influenced by him or not, a fact that is, in itself, remarkable.

Since Ritchie’s presence needs justification, especially in light of my exclusion, Coulson went further to defend her decision by defining what ‘family’ means. Regarding Ritchie specifically she says:

He’s there and he shows up and they are together and they talk about their work and they have an everyday intimate relationship that I think makes the family.

Her definition of family that includes shared daily life, intimacy and showing up sounds reasonable. But it quietly accepts the current shape of the Minnis family as normal, without ever asking why that shape exists.

The only reason that any of this is even a question is because I left the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The religion enforces mandatory shunning of apostates, and so I have been cut off from having a normal relationship with my immediate family.

For example, when I asked my father why he didn’t respect my wishes and remove me from “Ting an’ Ting,” he told me that “the family” had decided to keep me in the documentary. It’s a simple statement, but the meaning is clear. As far as he is concerned, I’m not family anymore.

Leaving the Jehovah’s Witnesses was the exit that closed every door. The arguments shift and contradict each other because none of them is the real argument. They’re all just different ways of arriving at the same conclusion.

What Coulson really means when she says “the show wasn’t about biology”, but can’t say out loud, is that the exhibition was about the approved family. The family that remained in good standing with the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

In the Creation’s Grace catalogue she wrote:

This exhibition aims to show how the artists have been inspired by one another and how, while focusing on different aspects of creation, they share in a common view of the world.

That “common view of the world” is the Jehovah’s Witness view of the world. Inclusion in the exhibition depended on being in good standing with the cult.

And then we find this, on the NAGB website, sitting in plain sight for over a decade — the real smoking gun.

All devout representatives of the Jehovah’s Witness Ministry, the family works tirelessly in the community and sees their artwork as a tribute to the glory of creation.

There it is. In plain English, and in Coulson’s own words, the actual criteria for inclusion in “Creation’s Grace”.

As such, no version of Ward Minnis could have been included in that retrospective — not the present one, not the absent one, not the painter, not the playwright, not the social critic, not the biological son.

And Coulson, at the head of a national institution, ran with it without asking why.

6.

A striking detail about the “Creation’s Grace” exhibition is that no one seems entirely pleased with it.

The man who requested it, Stan Burnside, basically said that what he got wasn’t what he asked for:

The nature of the exhibition changed from what I presented to her and she accepted, and what finally was presented.

And this despite Coulson telling me that she followed Stan’s mandate like a “good little soldier”.

So if the mandate was missed badly enough that the general in charge wasn’t happy with the final product, the question must be asked: who did it actually serve?

One of the most damning things about “Creation’s Grace” was that it was so familiar. Its expansion to include the whole family, for which Coulson receives credit, is something that had already happened nearly a decade before and was essentially just a continuation of the family custom.

The contours of the “Minnis family” are all there, with the wholesome imagery, the use of Ritchie Eyma to replace the apostate son, even ‘Bahamian nostalgia’ itself – these things did not originate with the NAGB, rather they are just ideas borrowed wholesale from what I have come to call “the Minnis Family brand.”

You can see this brand at work on the EddieMinnis.com collection of sites as my father has spread his patriarchy to cover the family, similar to the way that the large poinciana on the cover of the “Creation’s Grace” catalogue overwhelms and covers his painting and that of Nicole, Shan and Ritchie.

It is both umbrella and smothering blanket. The domains of RitchieEyma.com, NicoleMinnis.com and RoshanneMinnis.com are simply satellites of the main store front, of Eddie Minnis.

Both umbrella and smothering blanket, the poinciana as a metaphor for Minnis family patriarchy.

It is hard to see how this show would have been any different had it been directly curated by my father. At the very least, he seems to have had an undue influence on the final product. Burnside himself said regarding the exhibition:

Some, or the big bulk of the responsibility has to be on your father’s shoulders. Because he had the control over what could be done and not done.

But if this retrospective was not the place and not the time to scrutinize the Minnis brand then I’m not sure what the point of all of this was. The end goal was predetermined, possibly by Eddie Minnis himself, and the rationale for getting there was just made up along the way. The NAGB just provided institutional cover for what was essentially a glamour project.

Keeping me out, of course, made everything easier. No difficult questions needed to be asked; they didn’t have to address the impact of the Jehovah’s Witnesses on their art, on their lives or on our community and they just got on with the business of blowing smoke.

The most celebrated critic of Bahamian society got the most uncritical exhibition imaginable.

7.

“I come to collect. I come to collect. I come to collect.”

One thing that Coulson said to me many times, and in different ways, was this:

I am not particularly wanting to be put in the middle of a feud or become a caricature to throw mud at.

Unfortunately, that is not how this works.

First, sides were taken by cutting me out. Second, no one gets to be the head of a national institution and then have their decisions and writings exempt from criticism. She is the person most responsible for the “Creation’s Grace” exhibition and she is the only one who defends the final product.

I said what I said.

Stan Burnside and John Cox were not as involved in the exhibition but they also share blame. Burnside said that he realized late in the process that errors had been made and added me to his introduction. But to this point has done nothing to rectify the errors and has said nothing directly about it. Cox admitted that he could have said something once he saw the final exhibition, but he also did nothing and has said nothing about it. Due to this silence and inaction, both of them bear responsibility.

They aren’t the only ones either. My own extended family said nothing. My aunts including Jeanne Thompson, who spoke at the opening, Jessica Minnis and Heather Thompson, and cousins like the late great Dr. Gail Saunders, whose essay appears in the catalogue and Dr. Ian Bethel-Bennett, who wrote about the exhibition in the Nassau Guardian, they didn’t just turn a blind eye — they celebrated the exhibition.

If anyone was in a position to know what was wrong with “Creation’s Grace” it would have been them.

With all of the silence from the principals and my extended family’s approval I can’t really fault the wider community for following suit and also staying quiet.

What does it say though, about the Bahamian art community, that they looked at an act of erasure in their leading national institution and either didn’t see it, or collectively decided not to?

“Pay me oh. Pay me what you owe me.”

And here we are, more than a decade later, while the compound interest on this scandal continues to accrue. I’m not trying to imply that I am some Picasso Brent Malone figure — and I don’t have to be — I’m saying that I had done more than enough in my career to be included with my family in that retrospective.

I am saying that by following Minnis family custom, Coulson and the NAGB became the enforcers of Jehovah’s Witness rules.

By following Minnis family custom, the NAGB became the enforcer of Jehovah’s Witness rules.

Blinded by my father’s fame, a national institution put on a private exhibition that served no one but the Witness members of my family and rewarded them for being good cult members, and in the process, further punished me for freeing myself from their cult.

And this brings us to the true masterpiece that lies at the dark heart of this retrospective.

Beyond being an epic failure on every conceivable curatorial level, this exhibition tries to hide not one, but two erasures.

Creation’s Grace presents itself as a retrospective — a full accounting of an artist’s development over time. But what it actually shows is phase two Eddie, the post-conversion Jehovah’s Witness, looking back over phase one and reinterpreting everything through a Witness lens. The early street historian paintings, the music and even Pot Luck are there, but they’re framed as the beginning of his journey toward maturity – Witness maturity – as if his early work was somehow defiling.

It looks like an Eddie Minnis retrospective. It has his name on it, his paintings and chosen family around him. But the driving force of his best work – his willingness to be honest with Bahamian society for its betterment – is completely absent. In the 1972 preface to “the Best of Pot Luck,” he laid out what was essentially his early mission statement:

I feel that, as a Bahamian, I have the right — in fact I believe that it goes deeper than that — I have a duty to point out anything that seems wrong to me in my society.

This was the Eddie Minnis who changed Bahamian culture. Far from being “mere decoration” — he is essential. This is the man who was completely erased from “Creation’s Grace”.

My work and career lay closest to phase one Eddie Minnis, and were thrown out along with the best parts and intention behind his own early work. Early father and son were both surgically removed. The operation was a success. The patient died. And is nowhere to be seen.

The person we want to celebrate is not Eddie Minnis the congregation elder, or Eddie Minnis the Jehovah’s Witness — it’s Eddie the heathen, Eddie Minnis the rebel. He didn’t begin painting to glorify God. He even said himself that “It was because of my painting that I became a [Witness].” He was not religious or even spiritual when he started his art career. This was a later, second phase development, now superimposed on top of his original motivation.

Future generations of Bahamian artists and scholars who want to understand where their tradition came from, what Eddie Minnis actually meant and what he stood for — they will go to “Creation’s Grace” because it’s the official record. It’s what the NAGB produced. It will be cited, referenced, taught.

And it is wrong.

Deliberately, structurally, hilariously wrong. It’s a hollowed out account of his work and what motivated him.

“Creation’s Grace” isn’t just a disservice to him. It’s a disservice to every Bahamian who looks at that exhibition and tries to understand Eddie Minnis.

Everyone protected the Jehovah’s Witness he became and in so doing betrayed the man he was.

What can be done about this now?

Dear NAGB and new director Mrs. Maelynn Ford — The “Creation’s Grace” exhibition is still on your website without correction and its catalogue is still being sold in its original form. Let’s start there.

You owe me.

You owe us all.

Sincerely.
```
Coming up next: The final skeleton. It's titled "Breaking the Myth of the Minnis family" 
```
March 30, 2026

Meditation on Shit

Every body does like look at they shit.
I don’t know why.
I figure we does be admiring it. 
Turn round and stare
watch it go down.
Put it on your resume.
Look what good work I do.
I got my shit together.

We does think our shit is best.
Only we can’t never smell it
we does be too close.

When I was young
used to call Mummy,
“come Mummy look come see,
I bumpee strong 
like lion!” 

Sooner or later you find out
no one into your shit but you.

That’s when you grow up.

December 10, 2025

Pedestrian Crossing

Pedestrian Crossing. 2003. Acrylic on Canvas.

December 4, 2025
Upcoming Interview by ExJW Analyzer

I had the privilege to be interviewed recently by a legend in the exJW space – Jonathan Leger – for his YouTube channel.

The full interview premieres this Saturday at 7pm. You don’t want to miss it!

Here is a preview:

December 3, 2025
Support & Recovery Resources for Ex-JWs

Leaving — or even questioning — the Jehovah’s Witnesses can feel isolating. To make that journey easier, I’ve put together a curated list of books, documentaries, support groups, and creators who help explain the reality behind the organization and offer tools for healing.

Whether you’re recovering yourself, supporting someone who is, trying to understand what this religion actually asks of its members, or simply hoping to better understand a loved one’s journey, these curated resources offer guidance, education, and community.

You’re not alone, and you’re not without help:

>>> Resources for Recovering Jehovah’s Witnesses

November 25, 2025

Final Confession

For John Unrau
in memory of Eric

i.

You have become a black skeleton with flesh, 
a burnt out stick of coal
in a diaper. The scent of urine mingles with death’s potpourri
for you have wet yourself yet again. 
Where did your substance go? Burned off from hours of chemo
no doubt, the vibrant skin that once held life is now folded,
like your body, mirroring your worried brow
Huddled in the corner of a cot, in fetal position, 
you have your back to me.
Do you even know that I am here? Do you care?
Nurse Rosie comes in with your evening dose of pills
carrying a transparent checker board calendar case 
with your daily regiment
and a glass of water. Very hard to swallow
seeing you like this; like blood you have stuck to me in my trials 
now I know that I will bury you. 
Nurse touches your shoulder and you turn 
“Richard time for your medicine.” 
There is still motion in those bones; 
much less flesh for them to carry now. 
But your soul is heavy. 
Dark clouds are poised over your head. Acid rain
has poisoned your eyes so that now they sit in your head 
like hardened sapodilla seeds, dry, brittle and waiting to crack.
Total silence is your policy. 
I’ve been coming here for weeks waiting for a word 
to fall from your lips like a stone 
that I could catch with my two hands 
and polish into a paper weight. 
But you never even look at me. 
You take the pills one by one, 
your throat agitates the water, 
and I imagine they go somewhere.
There is no stomach that I can see, 
perhaps it just passes through to the pampers 
and gives the nurse something to do.

ii.

Remember when we said that death was nothing to fear?
We were the brave fishers of men, 
you the rusty headed sailor 
and I, the new sparkplug,
your protégé. We speaking in tongues and raising the sick 
pounding our bibles like we did the pavement, 
wearing out our shoes 
and the heathen’s ear in the same breath. 
We were the missionaries
wearing our privilege as proud as any company man could.
Our policy was spoken in durable terms, an indelible contract
written in our own blood, so strong was our faith! 
We believed.
We moved mountains for breakfast with our grits and butter
and daily peered into paradise 
picking out lots for future possession.
We smiled when deprived for we knew 
that the master above saw and would reward.
Counting the hours of the day when we spoke His name 
like holy accountants,
for we knew God’s truth better than Moses ever did
and fire filled our bones with zeal for the master’s house.
Death was a joke for us; 
we who stored our treasures in heaven,
and any who thought different were of a lesser calling, 
they were made of lesser stuff.
Lesser than we who put our own flesh on the alter 
to show we meant business.
Now.
Now that Death sits in the chair 
in the corner reading the Thursday paper.
Now that his presence fills my lungs like napalm
and my skin burns at his every breath
I find that I can not say those magic words. 
All of the books and talismans have turned to wax 
and have lost their power
All of the advice of the prophets that I parroted so eagerly 
now feels as hollow in my mind as a wind chime
knocking about in the smoke of a funeral pyre. 
My God, My God, why have you bamboozled me?

iii.

There is a knock at the door, and a head peers in 
through the crack,
your ‘fleshly’ sister, and double in the faith, 
herself veteran of many a crusade
she who tag teams with Rosie, 
taking turns to wipe you clean of pride
“Rick, Brother and Sister Jacobs want to see you…”
You barely look, but the almost audible sound of your suck-teeth
communicates a profound disgust.
The head disappears again, 
and we can hear the muffled excuses being offered
like candy to calm down kids.
Treat them kindly for they have position.
They were once your good friends 
and they have traveled far to pay last respects.
But they are married, and thus, are the enemy.
You only allow your single friends, 
admittedly not many now, 
the pleasure of seeing you die.
I hear you suck your teeth again. 
Perhaps it’s nothing against them personally 
but perhaps it is the thought of what might have been.
I think of all the women, good church sisters all, 
who wanted you
who would give the world now just to clean up your vomit 
who would have wallowed in your urine 
to sleep on the floor by your bedside,
just to have felt what it was to know a man.
But you were too righteous for such things.
Paul and the ever-virgin Jesus were your models.
You told me so many stories about sisters 
who would send you messages 
encoded in body language, asking strange favors 
just to linger in your presence 
to pass your way, 
to catch your eye, 
to get close enough for you to smell them
in the hope 
that their perfume might awaken some forgotten instinct.
But women were only a distraction and temptation to sin,
so you stayed single,
married the Lord,
deadened your body members,
slept alone
and I, seeing you as a modern day messiah, 
tried to follow.
But I was always weaker.
I still looked with lust. Trembled at night with desire.
I grew to fear talking to beautiful women 
lest I snap under the strain.
The church, for its part, 
lovingly closed off all options for release. 
Masturbation was sin.
A first step in the wrong direction.
So I prayed for forgiveness from wet dreams,
every erection became a trial
and a sign that I had failed in my training.
Private thought was sin.
I daily scrubbed the lewd graffiti 
off of the walls of my mind
that multiplied even as I cleaned,
even as I killed every flirtation,
every desire, 
I was losing the battle. 
Guilt was tattooed on my genitals,
and I hated my imperfection.

You made being a eunuch look so easy. 

And now after all these years 
to find out your secret wish.
You, who I thought had exorcised the demon of desire,
wanted a woman, a wife, maybe even child.
You sigh deeply, 
your head still turned to the wall, 
covered in shadow.

iv.

This disease travels like a snake in your family tree. 
Not so long ago you were the caretaker, 
the hero who never needed help
never stopping for air. 
Not so long ago it was your father. 
Since you had never left home,
you were the first choice for his nurse. 
And you wanted the job. 
Not long before that it was your mother, 
and you took care of her too
How much should one man take on alone? 
You became legend. 
The faithful would call your name in wonder.
Before sunrise you made your fathers breakfast 
and changed his diaper
then went out into the mission to help the heathens see Christ
all before you went to your office job by nine, always on time.
Lunch hour would find you giving Dad a fresh wipe and diaper, 
and cleaning up whatever was spilled on the floor and feeding him
before you were back talking to angry customers till five
then into the field you went again with joy, 
for the harvest was great,
nightfall would find singing 
while you rubbed your father's skin in oil
probably after you preached your prescribed sermon 
and cared for the congregation
just as the rule book said that you should. 
When did you sleep? 
After years when he finally died 
and you said the prayer at the graveside
you couldn’t cry. 
You still stayed in the same house, entertained their ghosts,
and spent even more time proselytizing than before
And you took me in, I, a child who had left my parents
in search of the Lord, in search of understanding,
you gave me a home.
I wanted to be your clone,
to pour out my soul like wine for the faith and the flock, as you did
Now I sit with my head in my hands 
impotent, 
watching your last days slowly evaporate.

v.

Six months before they found the Trojan in your blood
You came to me with news. You were going to live differently.
You were moving.
Your boss asked if you wanted to manage a small out island office
and you were going to take the chance. 
They could have sworn you would say no.
There was a church on the little island that would be so happy 
for your expertise. Definitely not your main reason.
But all your life you had lived in the same house, 
the same Nassau neighborhood,
forty-four years of tradition and memories 
in that one place.
Of course that meant that you were leaving me,
but at least I could still call.
I could not comprehend the seismic move. 
Why now? What had changed?
“I tired ah living my life for other people. 
“This my time now.”
Now, of course, 
this isn’t how you planned it.
This not-so-triumphant return to the same house, 
the same Nassau neighborhood
keeping the family tradition 
and way of dying
It is hard to take comfort 
in those six months of independence
six months that should have started 
twenty-five years sooner.

vi.

You tire of the wall and turn over,
in that moment I look into your eyes, and I try to smile. 
I have nothing to say.
Neither do you. 
But I see it. 
Your eyes are like hollow wells that descend deep
into the abyss of your soul, 
wells that haven’t seen water for so long that
vinegar beads up on their walls like sweat. 
The spin doctors will sell your death to the faithful as a victory
they will say you received the reward of certainty into your palm
that you died and opened your eyes in paradise
joyous, having lived the life the way it must be lived.
But in your eyes I see the hell of their lies.
All of this time you spent feeding the sick and preaching the word
you did not want to see your own great hunger,
filling your belly instead with air cakes of doctrine, 
filling your time with appointments,
chanting lines of salvation like code from a recipe book
but now the stench of foul gas cuts the tongue like a scythe. 
The hunger is still there, but there is no more time.
And the hunger is for life. 
To live. 
To love. 
To risk.
To find out now that the pearl of high price is made of plastic
is too much pain to bear.
You just close your eyes. 
The half-smile on my face is frozen there.
I have just heard your confession, 
I heard it in your eyes, as quiet as a thought,
and it has poisoned me.

November 12, 2025

4: House Arrest and Daydreams
Tragedy is the difference between what is and what could have been.
Abba Eban

“God had to be first – no compromise, family had to be second.”

This is how my father describes his life’s priorities in the “Ting an’ Ting” documentary. Now, this is not an unusual stand in a religious society like the Bahamas, but what does it mean to be a Jehovah’s Witness with “no compromises”? When the main thing in your life is devotion to a cult what follows from that?

This is not the position of every Jehovah’s Witness, mind you. There are Witnesses who maintain relationships with disfellowshipped children and grandchildren. There are those who just live their lives; knock on some doors every other week and do just enough to maintain their standing. But these aren’t the role models, they aren’t the people who are celebrated at Witness conventions.

Witnesses can’t force all of their members to have the same level of fanaticism. Those that don’t display the right amount of zeal forfeit any hope of advancement. For example, you can’t be an Elder if your house isn’t kept in order. Until I “took a tangent,” to borrow his phrase, my father’s house was very much in order.

1.

To understand the Minnis family is to know that because they want to be good Jehovah’s Witnesses they have placed themselves under house arrest. It’s hard enough to be a regular cult member but to be a good one requires so much more.

This means that many of the decisions in their lives are made for them. From the very basic and trivial, like how they spend their time, to larger concerns, like whether or not to go to University, to have children or whether or not they can have a blood transfusion. You can see the impact of this core decision expressed over and over again in almost every aspect of their lives.

Because they want to be good Jehovah’s Witnesses they have placed themselves under house arrest.

Take higher education for example. When I finished high school in Eleuthera I didn’t even bother to apply to a college. I wanted to put Jehovah first just like everyone else before me had done and therefore didn’t see the point. I was going to be a “Pioneer” minister. I didn’t even know how I was going to make a living. Paint, I guess?

The Watchtower does not flat out say “Thou must not go to University.” What it does instead is call it a “personal decision” then not-so-gently tell you what to do anyway. Witness literature portrays Colleges and Universities as the home of Satanic philosophy. Since the end-of-all-things is so near, their argument goes, do you want to spend the short time left getting a degree in Satan’s home or earn God’s favour by knocking on doors? The “decision” is left up to the individual but if they want to be a good Witness the choice is clear.

If a Witness does decide to go, as I later did, they are judged for that choice and are labelled as not being ‘spiritual’ enough. While I was a member I couldn’t shake the guilt I felt for going to COB. Of course, my later turn away from the religion was chalked up as proof that Watchtower was right all along.

My sisters had the same mindset when they graduated high school. They both excelled academically, especially Shan, who got a remarkable eight A’s in her GCE O levels. Despite the obvious talent, they did not pursue any form of higher education. If memory serves, Shan actually applied and got accepted to numerous Universities, only to turn them all down.

The end of the world was apparently so near when they finished high school in the late 80s that there was no time to get degrees. They were applauded at the Kingdom Hall for making the best choice by giving Jehovah their youth.

Fast forward to now, nearly forty years later, the imminent nearness of Armageddon was still being used to scare others into the same dead-end choices up until very recently. On August 22nd the Witnesses suddenly reversed their decades long stance on ‘additional education’ – and have now made it ok for their members to pursue it if they so choose.

In making this radical U-turn, they didn’t apologize for their failed predictions or for the consequences their policies have had on millions of people. They won’t be made accountable for all the potential that they have wasted. In the end, it’s people like Nicole and Shan who are left holding the bag.

2.

Witness teachings like the Paradise Earth are deeply embedded in the family’s art. Paradise is the hope that the majority of members believe in and cling to; that after Armageddon they will get to live forever on Earth without sickness and death.

For example, when my father began his art practice, his landscape paintings would capture the complete view of a scene almost like an historian. However over time, as Amanda Coulson observes, he “began to deliberately excise objects of human intervention – cars, telephone poles, even the people themselves.”

This practice of removing traces of modern life from his paintings actually mirrors Witness images of paradise that also don’t include modern objects. Images in the Watchtower that do include things like telephone poles and street lights are horrific scenes from their imagined Armageddon.

“Objects of human intervention”, are therefore used as a kind of visual shorthand to show an image’s place in the Witness’ end-of-the-world timeline. Apparently, there will be no street lights in Paradise.

Lamp poles, street lights, high-rises, cars and other traces of modernity are mostly featured in Witness images of the apocalypse. Left image link to JW.org – Right image link to JW.org

Eddie Minnis as street historian with streetlights and lamp poles intact. On the left “Dean’s Lane” 1976. On the right “Mason’s Addition” 1990.

On the left “Gregory Town” by Eddie Minnis, 1992. In the middle, the same scene in 2025 via Google maps — while the scene has changed over the years, note the visible infrastructure that was removed from the painting. On the right, the cover of the “Enjoy Life on Earth Forever” booklet released in 1982 that shares a similar composition and palette to the painting.

That my father, a long time Witness, also began to remove these types of objects from his work isn’t surprising. He is giving you a preview of what God will supposedly soon do Himself. I believe this practice is more a sign of conformity to Witness teaching than probably even conscious choice. Because of this I would argue that my father’s art has become not “a plea to revere the earth and live in harmony with it” as Coulson says, but rather a fantasy of what Paradise will look like when we, the heathens, are all gone.

The parallels between my sisters’ art and Witness imagery found in the Watchtower is also striking. Their art has numerous examples of labourers either engaged in farming, yard maintenance or household chores but as with the Watchtower examples, always without any modern tools. They also incorporate Witness compositions of the endless delights of Paradise in their work. Or on the other hand, they also portray people looking longingly towards Paradise from the despair of this current reality.

On the left, “Generations Caring Sharing” 2017 by Nicole Minnis-Ferguson. On the right, the opening illustration of the “You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth” book – released in 1982.

A person looking off in the distance, yearning for Paradise, is also a familiar motif of Minnis family and Watchtower images. On the left “Sisters and Friends” by Nicole Minnis-Ferguson 1990, and on the right a Watchtower image.

With very few exceptions it is possible to insert any of my family’s paintings directly into a Witness publication without modification, as if the family has been working on a Bahamian edition of the Watchtower magazine, consciously or not, for their entire careers.

I don’t think these connections are coincidence because these are the images that my family has been consuming for decades and that my sisters and I were literally raised on.

Interestingly enough, Nicole has actually worked for years in the Watchtower art department in New York and has likely produced a few anonymous masterpieces for them — anonymous because all the work published by the Watchtower goes unattributed to enhance the illusion that it comes from divine sources.

3.

The family has come under criticism in recent years as their work has grown increasingly out of step with contemporary Bahamian art practice. In the Director’s Cut my father addresses this criticism by saying that “some people call what we do chocolate box cover art.” According to Coulson, some also describe their work as “mere decoration.”

Is Minnis family art like this though because of the demands of the marketplace or because their religion doesn’t allow them to be anything else?

As the example of my life shows, Jehovah’s Witnesses discourage freedom of thought, and anything a Witness does or creates that could be seen as being “worldly” or against Watchtower doctrine could lead to punishment.

While there’s definite market pressure to produce work that is safe for the majority of buyers, I believe fear of going against Witness rules also plays a large part in defining their art’s content. This dual pressure leaves little room for experimentation, play or growth — many of the very things that we expect out of artists but are, for the most part, absent in their work.

The impact of this religious pressure from the Witnesses and how this affects their art is probably best seen in the example of my father’s Pot Luck cartoons. For ten years from 1971 he was the leading commentator on Bahamian politics with his immensely popular editorial cartoons. Even though this was something he had started before he converted, his practice gradually came into conflict with evolving Witness teachings on the matter.

Witnesses discourage members from expressing or even having an opinion on politics and this stand became more hard-line in the late 1970s. I have heard a few stories about this, but they are all some version of him having to make a choice between his faith and Pot Luck. In the end, he chose to be a good Witness and abruptly ended his influential creation.

Witness rules on politics also extended to his music and he soon ended his satirical work there too.

While his albums were never fully political, songs like “People to People” — a sharp skewering of the Ministry of Tourism’s 1975 program of the same name – and “Show & Tell” – a blow-by-blow account of shenanigans surrounding the 1976 Public Disclosure Act — were political and satirical standouts, not to mention big hits. This type of material vanished from his music around the same time that he cancelled Pot Luck.

“Island Life,” released in 1979, is probably the last serious Eddie Minnis satirical album. It had songs like “Granny Flyin’” – that skewered The Bahamas’ role in the drug trade and “Nassau People” – a pointed commentary on crime. On the album cover Fleabs is seen trying to pull in a box of “Columbia Gold.”

In retrospect, it appears that his cartooning helped fuel many of the sharp insights, both political and social, that he then brought to his music. Once Pot Luck ended in 1981, the music was left anchor-less, and began to drift in a more judgmental and preachy direction.

A good example of the difference between his Pot Luck era work and his more recent output is the lone new song that he recorded for his first Greatest Hits album released in 1996 entitled “Reap What You Sow.” On an album filled with political and satirical classics like ‘Nassau People’, ‘Show & Tell‘ and ‘People to People’ this new song featured lines like:

“Listen to what the Bible say / It say if you plant it / it will grow. / And you will reap what you sow. / If you don’t want to ruin your life / Remember sex was made for husband and wife.”

It wasn’t a hit.

On a certain level, of course, the song was also social commentary, but most, if not all, of the humour, compassion and most importantly, relevance, were gone.

4.

There’s a clip in “Ting an’ Ting” where I claim that my father could have done “more”, after which I receive an immediate narrative rebuke as the film cuts to Fred Sturrup saying that “To think about Eddie giving more would be selfish.”

Am I being selfish though? I understand that I have a perspective on this topic that’s not widely shared, but my point of view is deeply grounded in my own experience.

I know that being a good Witness put a cap on the art that I was able to produce. Simply put, what I created as I was leaving the religion wouldn’t have been possible if I had remained. By leaving the Witnesses I was able to explore my feelings without fear of offending an Elder or going against their theology.

What I created as I was freeing myself from the religion would not have been possible had I remained a Witness

For example, when I sent a draft of my play “The Cabinet” for my mother to read, I had forgotten that Witnesses don’t believe in an immortal soul and see any depiction of a ghost as something satanic. She was so offended by the ghost that was a central character in the play that I don’t even know if she finished reading it.

In this light, my father’s career can be best understood if we divided it in two. He began as a Bahamian trailblazer. His early years were full of national firsts like his cartooning, bold strokes like his painting on the side of the road and showed clear ambition. It seemed that he was always looking to do something new and fresh and from everything I have heard he was a carefree and fun-loving person. This joy of life could be seen in his early work and in the energy he put into the Bahamian art scene.

The second phase of his career came after he joined the Witnesses and became more and more religious, perhaps fully manifesting in 1981 with the cancellation of Pot Luck. Following the Witness mandate to be “no part of this world” there was a narrowing of his social focus and a closing of his world view. All his energy was then put into his evangelizing and in the little time that he had left he stuck to the well-worn paths he had already cleared. His palette knife technique got tighter, the music became less relevant and Pot Luck disappeared.

As for my sisters, they have been locked into their styles and subject matter since the beginning of their careers and their art has always been more about making a living than self-expression.

So what I’m thinking about when I say that my father, and by extension my sisters, could do “more” is an admittedly imaginary world where they are free from their Witness lockdown.

If they were just freed from the enormous time commitments of the Witness lifestyle they could create more art — quantity, but I believe that if they also dropped the Witness outlook on the world, their art would be of a far different quality.

You can call me selfish for having this dream, but this is the Minnis art I wish I could see.

5.

It’s impossible to calculate the total price my family has paid to be good Jehovah’s Witnesses. I know the cost to me and my life has been astronomically high.

It’s an interesting yet frustrating thought experiment to imagine what we as a family could have been had we not been Witnesses or at least, not taken it so seriously.

Despite their choices, my father is still recognized as a Bahamian icon and legend and my sisters have cemented their place in the local arts; such is the power of their talent. Perhaps in the end, to a young nation in need of artists and heroes, it doesn’t matter. We have what we have and we should be grateful.

On the other hand, I am always left with the sorrow of what could have been and what we will never get to witness.
```
Coming up next: Follow me as I uncover what happens when silence, religion, and respectability politics combine. Bust out your tinfoil hats for a full-blown "Bahamian Conspiracy Theory."  
```
November 5, 2025

Ventilate

Originally published in Yinna volume 2.

Windows in my head 	
fly open for the first time.
My soul staggers back 
the effort overwhelming 
strenuous.
Fatigued from years of conflict with 
plaque covered panes. 
Yellow, hard and gritsy 
like teeth.
Now cleaned away.

Look at the view! 
My soul soaks up the sight 
Takes down drab drapes 
confining curtains 
to throw away and burn.
Blocked the sun far too long.

Breeze blows clear through 
Corner cobwebs come loose
papers on the desk get unglued as 
un-filed forms fall on the floor 
agitating the dust bunnies
who know their multiplying days are done.

Resident musty funk fights fiercely with 
this foreign freshness. 
New wind kicks ass. 
Unwelcome stale air
gets pushed out
back through my ears.

Phone rings insistent. Memory on line two.
Call back. Better yet; 
leave a message at the tone.

Note to self:
New number needed.

Soul breathes in 
deep.
Sun shining through windows 
changes everything.
New in sight.
Fresh out look.
Office redecoration 
top priority.

November 1, 2025

Change of Plan

Caterpillars ugly but they die pretty.
God know why he make them so.
He told me the reason.
I forget what he said.

I love with most of my heart
God says always keep a little for yourself.
Now I know why.
Seen my tombstone.
Ones with the rest of my heart showed me.
Real nice of them.
I want to postpone the funeral 
to count my blessings.
Can’t wait they say
Program done printed.
Killer obituary.
Family flying in to pay respects.

Meta-morph-a-what-ever. 
Caterpillars can, so why can’t I?
Ask God. It ain’t my time. 
Rebirth resembles Death. 
Or precedes it.
Can't do one without the other.
Reconnect to life to live again. 
Reset the breaker, 
plug in the stove, 
make some tea.

Get in the coffin they say.
We gone eulogize you.
Talk about how lousy you was
Why we glad you gone.
How we miss you already. 
You was a good man still
Now you gone burn in heaven.

Straight jacket too damn tight.
Expectations strangling.
Break free.
Just like drowning. 
Forget which way is up. 
Yet. I always know 
Come up for air. 
Breathe! 
Feeling free and falling relentlessly. 
Giddy from the motion of standing still. 
Memories swirl and dance on the horizon, 
Turn into smoke. 
Sail away into the distance
over the edge of the earth.
The dirty cocoon drops.

You changed they tell me.
If you better now, how come I can’t see it.
Let the wings dry, jackass.
Flying ain’t easy.
Those who stay on the ground always think it is.
They imagine you don’t have a care in the world.
God know that’s a lie.
Big ugly lie.

Casket still there. 
Gone use it someday.
Just not now.
Got too much flying to do.

October 28, 2025

3: My life as a Ghost
The hardest thing in life to learn is which bridge to cross and which to burn.
David Russell

The thing I remember most about leaving the Jehovah’s Witnesses was how much time it felt that I had.

By removing all of their events, readings and busy-ness from my schedule it was as if I had uncovered a whole other life. When my dad – Eddie Minnis – and my sisters Nicole and Shan say in the “Ting an’ Ting” documentary that they spend most of their time in the Witnessing work, they’re not joking. Being an active Jehovah’s Witness is like having a full-time job on top of your full-time job. And one where the boss expects you to put in more and more overtime.

With all of that time available to me I threw myself into my studies at the College of the Bahamas. This is the period I was referring to in the documentary when I said that I “locked myself in a room and just painted.” The room in question was the second floor of COB’s S-Block where I was doing an associate’s degree in Art with an unofficial minor in English with classmates and colleagues like Jace McKinney, Lavar Munroe and Jackson Petit.

I was twenty-five and I was a newborn. Everything was fresh, foreign and strange. I got to celebrate my birthday and Christmas for the first time. Went to Junkanoo. Dated non-Witness women. I joined Track Road Theatre where amongst other lessons I learned to curse.

Celebrating my first Christmas in 2003 at the ripe old age of twenty-six.

What I was learning though were things that most people had learned when they were in their early teens or never had to learn at all.

Reminders of my past life still haunted me. Nassau is a small place and I kept running into former friends, or as I was trained to call them, “brothers”, who would no longer look me in the eye or speak to me. Each encounter was like sandpaper on my soul.

Not only was I now disfellowshipped but because I had stopped believing and could back up my non-belief, I had earned another label: “Apostate”. For Witnesses, apostates are described as stand-ins for the Devil himself. While they practice shunning of former members, they practically run away from apostates. It was like they all owed me money.

1.

When my doubts about Witness teachings really began to show, my family staged an intervention. My parents invited me to Eleuthera for a few days to talk about things. They did everything but burn sage in the house. They sympathized, shared some of their own nagging doubts. My father even said that he had come to similar conclusions as I had about certain Witness doctrines.

They sent me to visit a family friend in Rock Sound who was also an Elder. They hoped that maybe he could get through to me. After a day of trying he threw up his hands and said that this was my artistic nature coming out and there was nothing he could do.

At this point it was obvious that I wasn’t long for the faith. The Witnesses wouldn’t, couldn’t just let me be. The Elders would come as inevitably as the Terminators and I would be thrown out. This was when my sisters cried over me, when my family begged me to shut my mouth and just fade.

It felt like I was attending my own funeral.

The Witnesses wouldn’t, couldn’t just let me be. The Elders would come as inevitably as the Terminators and I would be thrown out.

As expected and as the Watchtower instructed, once the inevitable announcement came for me, it was as if I was suddenly dead to them.

My sisters have seen me walking on the road in Nassau and pressed gas.

My parents stopped supporting me through my studies at COB and left my maternal Aunt and Uncle to pick up that financial slack.

None of them came to see my play “The Cabinet” when it was on at the Dundas or the old Shirley Street Theatre.

None of them came to my wedding.

None of them visited when any of my three children were born.

2.

While my sisters have essentially cut me off, to say that my parents don’t talk to me is not entirely true. It’s a bit more complicated than that.

What communication we do have is strained. For example, I call my parents every year on their wedding anniversary, it’s one of the few things Witnesses are allowed to commemorate, and sometimes that has been our only contact for the year. If there is a life event, like an accident or a hospital visit, I get a call from them to let me know about it. If I start calling too frequently then I am told to stop.

When we do talk, the conversation is cordial, as if there is nothing wrong – as long as we stick to generalities and avoid any touchy subjects.

My three children – their only grandchildren – are a bone of contention. My parents have told me that the reason they don’t have a relationship with them is because of me. Apparently I need to let them all interact without my apostate self getting in the way. In other words, I need to give them my kids then leave the room.

Now, I know the Witness playbook too well to fall for that one. I don’t want my kids to get even a whiff of indoctrination so my response to that suggestion has always been a definitive “hell, no.”

A few years ago my mother accepted my terms and started calling the kids with me in earshot. While my father hardly ever joined in, she called about every week for almost a year and then just suddenly stopped. We later learned that since I was involved, even in such a limited role, Witness guilt had gotten the better of her. She didn’t feel that she was being faithful to Jehovah.

3.

In August of 2024 I brought my tribe with me to visit Nassau and Eleuthera. I wanted my then nine and six year old girls to get a chance to see their roots since they were now old enough to remember things. I was beyond shocked when my parents – and my sisters – said that they wanted to meet us. I was even more surprised when they showed up in broad daylight and came inside.

These were all unprecedented actions. For Nicole that was the absolute first time that she had ever seen or talked to my wife or any of my children and for Shan it wasn’t that much better.

The whole thing was as awkward as you could imagine.

I asked them if there was some Witness rule change that would allow them to meet and visit with us and with me, an apostate. They didn’t answer. I pressed further and my father said that they had made an “exception”.

The brief and awkward reunion, August 2024 in Nassau. I refused to allow a big ‘happy’ group shot due to my skepticism. Photo 1 – left to right: Kai, Ward, Leena, Sheema and Zuri. Photo 2 – left to right: Nicole, Eddie, Sherry and Shan.

It took me a while but I now think I know what that “exception” was all about. There is this Witness bylaw that they call “Theocratic Warfare.” It allows them to lie, deceive and bend the rules just a bit, or even talk to an apostate, if doing so would make their religion look better to outsiders.

The business they were likely after was removing a title card from “Ting an’ Ting” that said my kids don’t know their aunts or grandparents. So having met my children, ever so briefly, the text was removed as being inaccurate and then things promptly went back to being the way they were before. Silence from the sisters and my father, and the every-so-often calls from my mother.

I was suckered.

While the few “exceptions” exhaust and annoy me, they do seem to confuse my extended non-Witness family. Mission accomplished, I guess.

It’s led some of them to believe that maybe the thing blocking a reunion with my parents and sisters is me. While this might be true now, this was not always the case. I had long hoped that my family would find in themselves the power to break free from the Watchtower’s grasp and join me on the outside.

This hope also goes in the other direction. In the Director’s Cut my sister Shan says that “the door is not shut [for me].” She continued, “Where there is life there is always hope and we’re always hoping for the best.” The “best” that she is referring to, and the only way that I can be a part of the family again, is for me to repent for the crime of having thoughts of my own and return to the Witnesses.

For over two decades then my family and I have stood on opposite sides of a ravine. Each side hoping for the other to switch.

I now believe that our separate and opposite hopes are delusional.

It’s time we all moved on.

Facebook conversation on this post
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Coming up next: "House Arrest and Daydreams" — I count the hidden cost of life under Jehovah’s Witness authority... and the price my family continues to pay.
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October 21, 2025

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