During the 1960s, the unity of message in the fledgling art movement began to fray. One could see a split between artists choosing to remain with more traditional modes of expression and those who moved towards the abstract and conceptual in their work. Yet, even these latter artists were cautious and selective in their interest in modern approaches.
This involvement with western modes of art was, of course, only a middle-class preoccupation. The self-taught artists had no such interaction. Because they were poor and perhaps less fortunate, it was not even an option. As such, their work might be regarded as distinctly Jamaican and even African in source, while mainstream Jamaican art, stimulated as it has been by Western artistic trends, can find its integrity questioned.
Intuitive Art is characterized by a preoccupation with Jamaican iconography, an emphasis on no more formal artistic training, and a spontaneous references to the Jamaican context. Like Garveryism, this strain maintains stronger links with African forms. Milton George could be defined both as an intuitive and a contemporary artist.

When Edna Manley, (frequently referred to as the "mother of Jamaican art"), first arrived in Jamaica in 1922, she challenged the local art community when she publically criticized their work as "anemic" and "imitative". She may have been right, of course, since much of what was exhibited showed a preoccupation with European styled landscape paintings and portraiture using traditional techniques that didn't reflect Jamaica's culture or its people. Black people were rarely depicted other than in a documentary, ethnographic sense. Artists in Jamaica then seemed little concerned with the modern movements in Europe that were already exploiting so-called "primitive" cultures for inspiration.

The significant cultural change that sculptures like Negro Aroused evoked, however, cannot be credited to the actions of any single individual. Edna Manley's efforts would have been in vain were it not for a prevailing atmosphere of change in the local peoples' perception of themselves. Subsequently, Jamaica's modern art movement has been a collective one, motivated by the creativity of many Jamaican artists and thinkers reclaiming their history and mixed identities.

As a continuation of issues raised decades earlier artists committed to a philosophy of pan-Africanism used their imagery to re-position the African identity within a Jamaican cosmology. Their imagery reflected an eclectic mix of stylistic and conceptual sources that used theoretical strategies such as deconstruction to critique old-world myths related to Columbus, the Haitian Revolution, and European literary classics such as Moby Dick.

While not ignorant of these issues, our artists have shown interest in other concerns more directly related to Jamaica's culture. The widening gap between rich and poor in Jamaica has created tensions and led to the violence of which artists are all too aware. The artist's message is one of uplift, valorizing and glamorizing the black condition, and referencing past and present achievements of the race.