Winston Branch | Out of the Calabash

Branch moved to Britain from Saint Lucia in the 1960s at the early age of 12 and later studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where he was taught by Frank Auerbach, Euan Uglow, Keith Vaughan and Michael Andrews. He spent his early years studying and painting in London, during a highly productive time of underground movements that broke down social, cultural and artistic boundaries, with London emerging as a major international hub of counterculture. Branch has moved from Saint Lucia to London, to California, Germany and also Italy, all of which provide context for his innovations in the language of paint and colour.

Returning to large-scale paintings for the first time in many years, Branch’s newer works signal a shift in orientation. While earlier works contained a sense of thickness about them, as if paint had been applied, reapplied, and applied again to create a sense of depth and intensity, the newer works are lighter and open themselves up across the surface. The works of the 1980s and 90s highlight extraordinary mark-making that is shorter and energetic, while recent paintings explore the placement of marks through large, dynamic brushstrokes that create a sense of expansion.

His process often involves laying down canvas on the floor, allowing him to work with his entire body. This manner of working changes the hierarchical composition of the work. In the work Today is not a surprise, 2023, acrylic paint lands boldly on the surface: dark pigment covers the top of the frame with pinkish swashes of colour, creating soft, irregular marks. In many of his untitled works created in 2023, colours bloom and flow into each other organically.

Branch occupies a central place in the pantheon of accomplished British artists; his first solo exhibition was at the Arts Lab in 1967, the largely experimental art space founded by Jim Haynes, whose eclectic and transdisciplinary programme included David Bowie, Roelof Louw, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and more recently in 2024, he was awarded Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), an honour for outstanding service. And yet, he travelled extensively across Europe and the United States and enjoyed a global career spanning over sixty years. His travels shaped his visual language in fundamental ways, allowing him to operate simultaneously within the British art establishment and across significant cultural initiatives in the Global South. In 1969, Branch exhibited paintings in the First Pan-African Cultural Festival, a multiday international event held in Algeria, that brought together artists, intellectuals, and activists from across Africa and the diaspora to articulate anti-imperialist visions. In 1977, he participated in FESTAC'77, representing Britain in the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture held in Lagos, Nigeria. Since then, Branch has exhibited at the 11th and 23rd São Paulo Art Biennial as well as the 4th Bienal de Pintura de Cuenca, Ecuador, the first Bienal Agentina de Grafika Latina America and at the John F Kennedy Centre in 1994.

His journey with abstraction began in 1982, a time when new movements that challenged the dominant conceptual and minimalist trends of the 1960s and 1970s gained momentum. A drastic shift in his approach saw him moving away from figurative painting and the early influences of Catholic iconography that inspired his early work. His abstract paintings display an explosion of energy that demonstrates how light and colour affect the atmospheric quality of painting. Branch's explosive use of colour, what he calls “the humanity of colour”, can be understood as formal experimentation while also pointing to broader shifts in art-making practices that rejected detachment in favour of robust work that pulsed with energy and joy.

Alongside a distinguished career as a painter, Branch contributed to shaping generations of artists through his teaching profession. As educator and mentor, his legacy can be traced through some of the most prestigious institutions in the UK and the USA, among others, Kansas State University, University of California at Berkeley and Goldsmiths College of Art in London.