Story by: Donna May Long
Cresencia was born in 1944 as a war child and sent to Jamaica where she spent her childhood, once she was 18 years old there was no more foster money, in 1962 at 18, she won 2nd runner up in the Miss Jamaica pageant, and she had earned enough money to travel to ENGLAND.
She lived with a woman in the ghettos of London in an old abandoned building. She found a job as a copy typist making 2 pounds 10 shillings a week to cover room and board. She soon learned she was eligible to compete in the 1962 miss world contest, and as the very first black woman she placed in the top 10.
She married a British businessman in 1964 and had two sons, she divorced in 1970 where joint custody was not respected and was left childless with no Home and no family.
She began to dream of a mystical spiritual instructor named Judge. Each night she closed her eyes the art instructions began, they would last all night long in her dreams and when she Awoke she began to paint what she had learned, she began selling her paintings. Each night she would dream again of ancient artifact decoding. Each morning when she woke up she would put all her teachings from her dreams onto paper.
She returned to Jamaica with the money she earned from her art sales, the Jamaican Prime Minister encouraged her to open what is now called the Edna Manley school of visual art and cultural training.
She studied art through the week and worked at the national Gallery on Saturdays. With her studies came a scholarship to Mexico, with the help of the Prime Minister, she worked for a paper as a copywriter and eventually became editor of her paper.
She studied ancient astrological while in Mexico.
In 1982 her son Nicholas came to live with her as she moved to Lehigh Acres, Florida, USA. Today, at 79 years old, she dreams from her subconscious of a spiritual mentor that carries her into the ancient astrological signs, many of her paintings explain her teachings from within her dreams. Her artwork is each one of a kind full of meaning with each stroke of the brush.