Tucked away into an Eastern Road home is an elaborate and charming mural of Bahamian history and geography--yet its caretaker had only the name "D. Cavil" to credit.
As the story goes, says Malcolm McCay, the British artist D. Cavil rented a car for the summer from his grandfather's business, Malcolm's Tire Service. When summer came to and end and she could not pay for the rental, she offered instead to paint a mural in his home in 1948.
A.B. Malcolm closed up a garage on his property for D. Cavil to have a blank canvas and she set about filling his walls with pastel-colored maps and scenes from Bahamian history, including interpretations of the Lucayan natives, pirates, nautical superstitions and mythologies, and even winks to politicians in the late 1940s.
Decades later, his grandson Malcolm McCay has fond memories of the room in which the mysterious artist blanketed the walls with illustrations--and as a throwback man himself, hosting a morning radio show "Island Classics" on Island FM, McCay has worked over the years to preserve and develop the design, welcoming a number of artists to add their own flair to the walls.
Though the memory of her and her work has unfortunately faded, D. Cavil is in fact Diana Pullinger, the British-born artist who once made major contributions to the Bahamian landscape with her painted murals.
Though the efforts of Bahamas Historical Society President Jim Lawler, Diana Pullinger's memory is somewhat preserved--in September 2010, along with significant contributions from Lee Erikson, Lawler gave a comprehensive presentation on Pullinger's life and significant contributions to The Bahamas at The Bahamas Historical Society.
Pullinger largely used her maiden name as her artistic identity, though in the 1940s she married Australian Clive Cavil, a Director of Public Works in The Bahamas in the 1950s. Through her studies at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the U.K. and her extensive travels which took her from Europe, to India, to The Caribbean, to Central America and North America, Pullinger enjoyed sketching people at home in their native landscape.
Some may be familiar with her 10x10 foot mural at the Nassau International Airport which she painted in the 1950s and which disappeared without a trace one or two decades ago--the mural, depicting the landfall of Columbus, bears semblance to a section of the mural on the McCay property, which McCay considers to be the first manifestation of the piece.
In the late 1950s, Pullinger was also commissioned by Louise Erikson--with whose family she enjoyed a long friendship--to paint the 14 Stations of the Cross at the St. Philips Anglican Church in Inagua. Though a hurricane damaged the church, the paintings have been preserved in the Anglican community center in Matthew Town.
But Pullinger's most significant contribution to Bahamian history may be her charming design for logo of The Nassau Shop, replicated for as long as the beloved shop existed. In addition, she designed screens depicting Bahamian history in her unique illustrative style for the shop, which have since found a home at The Bahamas Historical Society.
Lawler considers the screens to be an impressive display of Bahamian history up until the mid-1900s, and will release a book "The History of The Bahamas in Pictures" later this month, based on the dense information Pullinger included in the work.
After decades of traveling back and forth, Pullinger and her husband permanently left The Bahamas in the 1960s in the midst of political turmoil. Nonetheless, thanks to the preservation efforts by those like Jim Lawler, the Eriksons and Malcolm McCay, her significant artistic depictions of Bahamian history will be fully recognized and celebrated.

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