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Look at This Mess!
Look at This Mess! 2003 and 2025 by Ward Minnis. Engraving / Print on Paper 2003. Digital overlay 2025. -
Regarding the Painting
Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.
Pablo Picasso
It’s been 12 years since I finished a painting.
When you haven’t done something you love for that long there have to be strategies that you use to keep it that way. For me, these strategies existed in the form of excuses.
My favourite excuse is that painting requires so much more space than my writing. There is truth in this on multiple levels of what you would even call ‘space’.
When I’m talking about space in terms of time, I find that can block off an hour for writing and get something done, while an hour is hardly enough time for me to even set up for a painting session. Working full-time and having kids makes it so that my time is at a premium and I have told myself that the afternoon I would need for a painting session just isn’t logistically possible.
Complaining about set up time would also lead me to another definition of ‘space.’ Everything in the apartments and homes where I have lived has, of necessity, been multipurpose. I don’t have a studio and therefore don’t have a dedicated space to work.
Beyond the chore of setting up some corner of my home for a painting session I would then bemoan the lack of distance I was able to get from the canvas. In the classrooms of the College of the Bahamas (COB) where I really fell into my work, most of the time I spent painting was actually spent a few meters away, on the other end of the room, just staring at what I had done, trying to intuit what I needed to do next.
But likely the space that I really needed was mental. My art practice carries so much family baggage that once I lost momentum each paintbrush began to weigh a thousand pounds. In the end the internal voices and self-sabotage were too much.
And so a decade passed by.
1.
I have been thinking about a version of this project for a very long time and no matter which way I turned it over in my mind, I felt that to make the kind of statement that I wanted, that the subject matter demanded, I had to have a painting component to go along with it. It was the only way.
The old excuses were still there, but this time, out of desperation, I tried something new. Following the lead of a good friend I went digital.
Using digital tools eliminated a lot of my excuses about space. I no longer needed set up or even to clean up afterwards. My canvas was the same screen I peered into daily.
With those obstacles cleared I made time in my schedule and found that I was able to make notable progress on a piece in the same time constraints that I had with writing.
In terms of mental space – this project was in many ways the thing that stood in my way all along. Looking back now, I believe it was what I needed to get out of my system so I could move on.
As I worked, I became more free, more animated. The digital paintbrush became lighter as the baggage began to fall away. I began to hear my voice again over all the old background radiation.
This is not to say that I am cured, that backsliding into doubt for another ten years isn’t possible. That possibility is always there, lurking.
I only know that today I did what needed to be done.
2.
I am committed to have a painting go along with every major post in this limited series. That could either be an earlier work of mine, if it fits with an episode, or a new work that pulls directly from ideas, phrases or themes in the piece.
The work that I have created for this project is essentially a continuation of visual ideas that I had started when I was studying art at COB in 2003. Back then I exhibited this work at the “Colour of Harmony” show. I called this series “Inner Journey.” Any earlier work that is displayed in this project comes from that series.
At the Colour of Harmony COB art show 2003 with my family. From left to right Heather Thompson, Eddie Minnis, Ward Minnis, Sherry Minnis and Jeanne Thompson. The Thompsons are not Witnesses. At the time, I was still nominally one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, but I was well on my way out. While the series was my way of working through my doubts when it felt as if my world and my head were imploding, it was also a last attempt to show, to explain to my family what I was going through.
I was hoping that they would see what I was trying to say, but when I asked what they thought of the dark and depressing images I had created, they claimed to see nothing unusual.
I still don’t believe them.
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1: The Truth about the Truth
I think the most important contribution [Eddie Minnis] has made to culture in this country is in the way he has lived his life.
Stan Burnside
I was one of them.
I was a Jehovah’s Witness yes, but I was even more than that. I was what you would call a true true believer. To convert people to this religion I learned to speak fluent Haitian, I even did missionary work in the Abacos and Great Harbour Cay. Maybe I knocked on your door one Saturday morning with a broad smile holding a Watchtower magazine in my hand asking you about something deep, like ‘why do people die?’
Maybe you slammed the door in my face.
It’s not like I can blame you. I realize now that Saturday mornings are not the time and your front porch is not the place for those kinds of conversations. If that was me back then, I sincerely apologize. You have to understand that, at the time, that was all I knew. I was probably out there every week, barring sickness, since I could fit into a stroller.
I’m not the only one either. My whole family is so deeply steeped in this religion there isn’t a single part of us that isn’t stained.
The Minnis family as Jehovah’s Witnesses – circa 1990 at our home on the Current Ridge, Eleuthera. From left to right: Nicole, Sherry, Ward (me), Eddie, Shan. As with most things in our family, it started with Dad. He’s the only one of us with a real conversion story. If you watched the “Ting an’ Ting” documentary about him, you heard him talk about how his yearning for God started. One day while he was out painting and listening to the radio it struck him that there was so much beauty in front of him and on his canvas but so much ugly on the news. His desire to reconcile the two realities led him to the Witnesses, and they helped him understand the Bible for the first time.
This answered his burning questions, something that he says he didn’t get from the Anglican Church that he grew up in. Everything began to fit for him. My Mom soon joined him in his Bible studies and they were baptized into the religion in 1974 and we, the children, naturally followed along.
1.
When he became a Witness, Eddie Minnis – my father, was already a Bahamian icon and fast approaching the apex of his powers. He was a firmly established artist, having painted all over Nassau in his trademarked cherry red Volkswagen van. The new Prime Minister, Lynden Pindling, was attending his exhibitions and even buying pieces.
The daily editorial cartoon was a concept that he imported from abroad and made wholly Bahamian. He called his creation “Pot Luck” and it ran in the Nassau Guardian newspaper. It had become so popular that, in a few short years, it was driving sales of the paper.
Eddie Minnis painting in the community before he became a Jehovah’s Witness. He was also playing the lead character in “The Fergusons of Farm Road” – only the most popular Bahamian soap opera ever – which at the time, was still on ZNS radio.
He used the popularity of the Fergusons to launch, what was to pretty much everyone, a very unlikely music career. His first hit “Miss Lye,” performed by Kenny and the Beach Boys, was a song about the villain and the most popular character from the show.
He parlayed that success into a working partnership with Ronnie Butler, the biggest, baddest musician in the country and they had just released the hit “Our Love Is Gonna Make It” – with Ronnie on vocals in 1973.
To an outside observer it appeared that my father had the Midas touch and he probably had more power and influence than anyone in the country save the new PM. But as someone described by those who knew him as neither religious nor spiritual, he seemed the person least likely to have a religious epiphany much less undergo a radical conversion.
But he did.
What did he see in the Jehovah’s Witnesses that would make him trade in his dashiki for a suit and tie and go out regularly in the hot sun hawking Watchtowers?
He thought that he had found the “truth”.
Now, Witness beliefs are their own separate rabbit hole, but to get a basic grasp of the religion, there are only a few things that you have to know.
- 1. Jehovah’s Witnesses really do call their religion the “truth” and believe that they are God’s chosen people. They believe that their interpretation of the Bible comes straight from God through the Witness higher-ups. While this isn’t that much different than what most religions say, Witnesses take it very seriously. They are the one true religion and everyone else is wrong.
- 2. The end of the world is always just around the corner and when all is said and done there will only be Jehovah’s Witnesses left. This is because on judgment day God is going to kill everyone who isn’t a Witness.
- 3. Witnesses knock on your door because they don’t want God to kill you. Your only chance to survive Armageddon is to become a Jehovah’s Witness. So every time you slam that door in their face remember that you are giving God one more reason to kill you.
- 4. The prize Witnesses promise for surviving Armageddon is life in a Paradise Earth.
Witness literature like the Watchtower and the Awake! and their countless books are jam-packed with pictures of Paradise. They show you little children playing with lions, lions playing with lambs, people of all stripes, colours and ethnicities mingling in peace and harmony.
A Jehovah’s Witness rendition of the paradise earth. Paradise would be a world with only Jehovah’s Witnesses, and as such it would also be a planet with no war, no sickness and even no death. Long dead loved ones who didn’t have a chance to be converted to the Witness faith would come back to life and then have the chance to learn their theology alongside Biblical legends like Moses and Enoch.
Make it there, and you would live forever.
2.
The early 1970s were no ordinary time in the history of the Witnesses. The organization was seeing huge year-over-year increases in membership as followers were putting in maximum effort to convert as many people as possible. There are stories from around the world of people putting off surgeries, dropping out of school, selling their homes and putting everything in their life on hold. This was because Jehovah’s Witnesses believed and actively taught people that the end of the world was coming in 1975.
So not only had my father found the “truth”, but he had found it just in the nick of time!
Jehovah’s Witnesses believed and taught that the end of the world was coming in 1975.
This truth did not come cheap though. He had to give up a lot to embrace this new faith. If you watched the documentary you might think that the only thing he had to do was cut off his beard. It was so much more than that.
He started knocking on doors, which must have been a humiliating process for him. He wasn’t an anonymous figure in Nassau anymore, he was a celebrity. He had overcome so much scorn for painting on the side of the road and now he had to do it all over again for passing out Watchtower literature. I can imagine people excited to find Eddie Minnis at their doorstep souring by the minute when they realized what he was really there for.
In addition to all the preaching, he had to go to 5 hour-long meetings a week at the Kingdom Hall. He tried to convert his friends and relatives to his new faith and pushed many of them away. He had to give up celebrating Christmas, Easter, birthdays, and even Mother’s Day. And this was only the beginning, because his painting and his art gradually transformed from his passion into a means to an end, as in his words, he spent “most of his time” in the Witness preaching work.
You may be thinking though that we’re now in the year two thousand and twenty-five. 1975 came and went and this wicked old world didn’t go nowhere. Armageddon didn’t happen, yet Eddie Minnis remained a Witness. For another 50 years.
To understand the reason he stayed in the religion long past that great disappointment brings me to the last thing that you have to know about Jehovah’s Witnesses:
- 5. They’re a cult.
Facebook conversation on this episode.
Coming up next: “Using the ‘C’ Word Responsibly” — Yeah, damn right I called them a cult. Next week, I'm going to unpack some deep personal trauma to show you why. -
Welcome to Paradise
Welcome to Paradise. 2025 Digital Painting by Ward Minnis. Sketchbook Pro on Mac. Huion Tablet. -
Intro: Closet Full of Bones to Pick
A movie just came out about my family and I got about a billion bones to pick with it.
My sisters are in it, my mother is in it. Hell, I’m even in it. But it’s really about my dad, the legendary Eddie Minnis. Yes, THE Eddie Minnis. The iconic Bahamian fine artist, cartoonist, singer and songwriter. It’s called “Ting an’ Ting”, and it’s directed by Kevin Taylor, executive produced by Edgar Seligman. You can Google them.
It premiered at the Bahamas International Film Festival (BIFF) over the 2024 Christmas holidays and to put it bluntly, in its current form, I want nothing to do with it.
I dead serious.
I’ve asked the director, my dad, and the executive producer of the thing to cut me out of it and they have all, so far, refused. “The movie finish” is basically their line.
Last week, I even dropped a press release about why I want to be taken out of this film. But a press release has to be short. It can’t possibly hope to contain all the backstory, all the nuance, all the tea that I need to spill to make you understand where I’m coming from.
You ever been quiet about something so long that when you finally get tired and fed up and have to start saying what’s on your chest that you can’t stop? Well, that’s where I am right now. I’m standing in front of this massive walk-in closet full of rotten old skeletons and wondering which one I need to air out first.
Let me start with this: There was another version of this movie that I wish you could see, let’s call it the “Director’s Cut.” When Kevin came to me in 2023 about this project I asked him if he was sure he wanted me of all people to be in this movie. I am Ward Minnis, Eddie Minnis’ son, but I am also the black sheep of the family. Don’t believe me? Go to his website and try to find me. Go on, I’ll wait.
I’m standing in front of this walk-in closet full of rotten old skeletons and wondering which one I need to air out first.
“Eddie Minnis and Family” has come to mean “Eddie Minnis and daughters and even son-in-law” – this might be the first time you even heard that he has a son. It might surprise you even more to know that I also paint. That I am also a writer, an actor, and a bunch of other artistic things; but we’ll get to that later.
So why am I on the outs with my people? What did I do that was so evil that I needed to be scrubbed out of the Minnis family record on the website, then kept against my will in the documentary? Well, that’s the thing that’s in the Director’s Cut that I wish you could see. That version goes into their religion, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the fact that he raised all of his children, including me, in that religion. And then, when I turned twenty-five, I left.
Yes, I left the Jehovah’s Witnesses and I been catching hell for it ever since.
That version of the documentary isn’t perfect either but at least it was honest. This one, the one that you might have seen at BIFF, is by contrast a joke. I’m still there talking about my ‘artist’s journey’ and of course the movie is still about Dad and you get a bunch of that. But, for me, the thing that mattered most to me, my pain and the cross that I bear daily got reduced to a single title card.
Now you might say, why did you want to be in this movie anyway? You should have said no from the beginning. And you know what? You are absolutely right. I should have listened to you and I should have listened to my wife who told me the exact same thing from jump street. But I hard-headed and I didn’t listen and if I didn’t see that Director’s Cut I would say that I deserved what I got.
But, I did see it. And it was good. Then everything that made it good was ripped out of it. Now its only purpose is to be a vehicle to glorify my old man.
My father is in that phase of his career, let’s call it the twilight, where people want to give him his flowers while he’s alive. The “Ting an’ Ting” movie went from being a thoughtful consideration of him and his life into what these things always end up as – an extended chorus of “How Great Thou Art“. And good for him.
That isn’t the reason that I want out though, because don’t get me wrong, he is great and legendary and all those other adjectives too.
The main reason I want out is because the released version makes Jehovah’s Witnesses seem like a normal religion.
And I am here to tell you why that just ain’t so.
The bottom line: If you want a happier family, bring those skeletons out of the closet.
Bruce FeilerHere’s the deal: I’m not going to do this all in one go. I’m going to break it up into episodes. I’ve done picked out the seven juiciest most rancid skeletons in that walk-in closet and every week from now till I’m done I’m going to dissect a different one, bone by bone, and piece by piece and give you the full report.
I’m going to give you what you haven’t gotten from the “Ting an’ Ting” documentary or any other thing you have read or seen about my family, which is a full examination of them as Jehovah’s Witnesses as only an insider outsider like me could do.
To do this, I’m going to have to go deep and of course this involves me telling a lot of my own story too. We’ll be talking about art, some history, a bunch of cultural criticism and a whole boatload of tea.
I’m going to give you a full examination of my family as Jehovah’s Witnesses as only an insider outsider like me could do.
It’s about the Minnis family but trust that a lot of people you know will be catching strays or direct shots too. This is our family story but it is also a deeply Bahamian story. This is where we start, but I think you’ll be surprised where we going to end up.
You coming?
Facebook conversation on this episode.
Coming up next: I go back to when this whole thing started for my family, as I take out the first skeleton: "The Truth about the Truth." -
Family Legacy
“Family Legacy” 2025 – Digital Painting. Sketchbook Pro on Mac. Huion Tablet.
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Ward Minnis Seeks Removal from Father’s Documentary, Plans Artistic Response
Press release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
[September 12, 2025] – Ward Minnis, son of famous artist, cartoonist, singer and song-writer Eddie Minnis, has formally requested to be removed from the “Ting an’ Ting” documentary film about his father. Minnis’ desire to be removed from the film is caused by editorial changes that he says violate his original agreement with the filmmakers.
Despite initial assurances from the producer that his request would be considered, no action has been taken in over nine months to address his concerns. In response he has prepared an expansive artistic experience to tell his side of the story that is set to begin Tuesday, September 16th.
Ward Minnis, son of Eddie Minnis, at his home in Ontario, Canada. Photo by Shiemaa Khogali-Minnis Minnis originally agreed to participate in the documentary after discussions with director Kevin Taylor in August 2023. Minnis was transparent about the strained relationship with his family due to religious differences and was assured that this aspect of the story would be given appropriate screen time. However, following last-minute edits—reportedly made at the request of Eddie Minnis, his father—Minnis’s narrative was significantly altered, only including an “artist’s journey” and omitting the deeper conflict that was central to his participation, reducing what was a thoughtful discussion of the issues to a single title card.
“The version of the film I saw and approved in June 2024 more accurately reflected my experiences,” said Minnis. “But the final release, which premiered at BIFF in December 2024, removed critical elements of my story, misrepresenting the truth in a way that benefits my father’s narrative rather than presenting an honest portrayal.”
Since the film’s release Minnis has repeatedly requested removal from the film, first addressing his concerns with the director, Kevin Taylor and then with his father, and later with executive producer Edgar Seligman, who initially appeared cooperative but has since taken no action.
“The current version of Ting an’ Ting is not what I agreed to, and it disregards my wishes,” Minnis stated. “Given the continued inaction, I am making my request public: I ask the filmmakers to remove me from this documentary immediately.”
In response to the misrepresentation of his story in the documentary Ward has prepared an expansive artistic experience to tell his side of the story set to begin on Tuesday, September 16th.
Minnis remains open to dialogue and will continue to push for the ethical resolution of this matter, but in the meantime, he has produced a full artistic response to the documentary, set to debut next week, that will tell his side of the story and go into depth about his relationship with his family and their relationship with Jehovah’s Witnesses.
“If you want a job done right, do it yourself” says Minnis. “Through my unfortunate experience with this film I have learned that I need to tell my own story, in my own way.” Minnis’ artistic response to the film will be simultaneously published on Facebook and on his website MentalSlavery.com with aspects of the experience touching multiple social media he says.
For media inquiries, please get in touch with Ward Minnis by using the MentalSlavery.com contact form.
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15 years of silence.
First post in 15 years! Damn. This site has been down more than it’s been up and I haven’t said anything in literal decades. Hopefully that’s going to change. Got it back and semi-functional today. Lot’s still left to do.
Much, much more to come.
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My Two Cents on A Day of Absence
I am pleased to present the first ever guest essay on Mental Slavery.com written by prominent Bahamian architect and cultural icon, Jackson Burnside. This is the full text of Jackson’s speech, presented during the Day of Absence debate, held at the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas on January 12, 2010.
BY Jackson Burnside III“I can’t see anything,†he thought. “If I see nothing, that means I’m stupid! Or, worse, incompetent!†If the Prime Minister admitted that he didn’t see anything, he would be discharged from his office.
Hans Christian Anderson
Both of these Artists have managed to draw me, and many others, into their musings on the state of Art and Culture in our Bahamas, and they have managed to maintain a mature level of discussion while throwing the kind of blows intellectually that would have knocked out the toughest head-fellas back in the days of the Cinema on East Street. Now you must understand that all this is happening on the Internet which opens up The Bahamas to expose ourselves to the world, to give and to receive, consciously and subconsciously. We seem helpless to control the volume of the information we are exposed to, and we seem to accept and wait for our opinions of ourselves and our worldview to come to us from those outside to whom we have given the authority to define us.
We did not always have the Internet, obviously. Less than twenty years before Independence in 1973, we thought that television was the limit of technological innovation and we accepted the intelligence came from Ed Sullivan and Walter Cronkite. Before television we were connected to the radio. Even before electricity was inside the house, we turned on battery charged radios on schedule to listen to the BBC and ZNS to hear the news and special stories.
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Trying to Make a Dollar Out of Fifty Cents
A Comprehensive Critique of Nicolette Bethel’s 2009 Day of Absence.
Out of absence let the new day be born. — Helen Klonaris
The response to Dr. Nicolette Bethel’s Day of Absence held for the first time on February 11, 2009, was nothing short of amazing. I had almost lost faith in the desire of Bahamians to band together for a cause, and yet here they were banding. Nicolette deserves to be commended because she did something — she threw an idea into the void and the response to that idea proves conclusively that we, as an emerging art community, need something like this to rally around.
Nicolette Bethel and I have been friends since she taught me English 120 at the College of the Bahamas in 2001. When I was in Nassau this past January gathering research for my Masters thesis she suggested that we get together and share a coffee. We eventually met at the Starbucks across the road from the College of the Bahamas. At the time I had only briefly heard about her Day of Absence, I had skimmed over the press release cum manifesto and I thought then, much as I do now, that the idea had potential. Over lattes and tea we talked about her upcoming day, the need for art in society, the inescapable nature of design in every aspect of our lives, and the fact that a place like the café in which we sat, was what it was, in large part because of the art.
The warm and fuzzy feelings left me once I read what had been written about the Day of Absence more carefully. The more contemplated the ideas as presented, the more I was bothered by the incongruities in the project. This essay is thus my odd way of congratulating Nicolette on a job well done while taking her to task for ideas that are at best half-baked. Her Day of Absence clouds over and conflates many different and unrelated ideas while advancing an awkward historical agenda and a cumbersome theory of cultural development. It is political and apolitical, about something and about nothing, clear and blurry, all at the same time. I still believe that the Bahamian art community is in need of something like this though, and if we can begin a dialogue on what we really lack, maybe we can eventually get at what it is we really need.
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