After a decade of professional work, Trinidad and Tobago artist Nicholas Huggins presented his first solo exhibition, Up To Now, at The Art Society in Port of Spain.
The title carried a double meaning: it marked the fact that Huggins had not previously staged a solo show, while also presenting the body of work he had developed up to that point.
Beyond digital illustration
Huggins is widely associated with digital art and design, including the visual development of Google’s 2022 steelpan Doodle.
For Up To Now, however, he deliberately widened the picture of his practice.
The exhibition included digital prints, paintings, charcoal drawings, ink work and early sketches connected with the steelpan project.
That range allowed the show to function as a compact retrospective rather than as a presentation of a single series.
A visual language rooted in Trinidad and Tobago
Huggins has repeatedly drawn on recognisable Caribbean subjects, from fruit stalls and old houses to Carnival and the everyday built environment.
He described this local familiarity as central to the response his work receives: viewers recognise places, objects and cultural references from their own surroundings.
The exhibition also clarified the relationship between Huggins’ commercial design career and his independent artistic practice.
Up To Now presented those two strands not as opposites, but as parts of the same visual vocabulary developed over ten years.