“Painting for me is to take an amorphous substance like paint, and turn it into an illusionary image, thereby evoking the sensuality of feeling. Color is light, and through color I express my humanity.“
It is feeling and emotion which dominate Winston Branch’s canvases. Rather than allude to a particular time or place, Branch instead puts colour and abstract form at the forefront and works such as Saint Lucia seem to share and celebrate the universality of abstract painting in the modern world.
Born in Saint Lucia in 1947, Branch was raised as a strict catholic, and as a result of his religious education he first started in figurative painting. He was accepted at the Slade School of Art in 1966, an event which he believes changed his life’s trajectory. At the Slade he studied alongside contemporaries David Hockney, Howard Hodgkin, John Hoyland and Patrick Procktor. He would go on to teach at The Slade, Chelsea College of Arts and University of California (Berkeley, CA) as professor of Art.
"Winston Branch ... paintings suggest gardens, landscapes and seascapes, gardens in full bloom, the sky and clouds, the sea and it's waves. ... they are the works of a daring colorist whose brilliant hues achieve a true iridescence."
He didn’t turn to abstraction until 1982, the same year that the British Black Arts Movement was founded to examine issues of racism and the legacies of colonialism in Britain.
The vivid and diverse colours used in the present work could be interpreted as a celebration of Saint Lucian culture and landscape that perhaps differs so from the Artist’s habitant city of London. Yet, at the same time, there is a kind of universality to colour and joy, and fundamentally, art, that is received and shared by Branch’s paintings. It doesn’t necessarily pertain to just one place, time or culture, but instead, is a positive fusion of multiple different influences, people and memories, all of which colour Branch’s canvases.
The art critic Carlos Diaz Sosa described his work as:
"abstract canvases in cool, cloudy colours that have a quality which allow the viewer to explore the depths of the mind. Branch uses paint like a symbol, a purely aesthetic language, an illustration of spirit."
Like all of Branch’s paintings, the present work is executed in acrylic paints. This is the Artist’s preferred mode of medium as he likes the way that acrylic oxidises faster in comparison to oil, and he can water it down and to further spread and diffuse colour on the canvas. Comparison has been made between Frank Bowling and Branch through their similar use of diffused colour and influences of abstract expressionism in order to make a total image and colour field. The result is a touching, expressive and sensual work which is open to interpretation.
Works by Winston Branch are represented in the permanent collections of Tate Britain, The Victoria and Albert Museum, The British Museum, The Arts Council of Great Britain, Rugby Art Gallery and Museum, The Museum of Modern Art in São Paolo, The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, among many others.