By Amelia Abraham
A new generation of painters is reshaping the language of British art, with work that’s technically assured while searching and experimental. For these five artists, the canvas is the stage for processing memories and making sense of identity.
“Having an artistic practice doesn’t mean you’re touched by a deity, or seized by a fever dream,” says the painter Shaqúelle Whyte. “For a lot of us, it’s consistency: turning up, regular hours.” The process is often humbling: “Usually what you’re trying to achieve fails the minute you get to the canvas. It’s like two plus two equals six. Mistakes happen and you work through them. A painting is ugly before it ever feels complete.”
To look at Whyte’s paintings, failure or ugliness does not come to mind. Evocative yet enigmatic, his astonishing works have drawn comparisons to classical painters like Rubens. “I understand that, because I reference tradition to a degree, and I’m interested in what paint can do: layers, pigment, glazing, weight, distemper, transparency. I get nerdy about material. A blank canvas is infinite, painting becomes this transformative space, but to push it somewhere unknown, you have to understand the chemistry.”
Since graduating from the Royal College of Art (RCA) in 2023, Whyte has been widely tipped as a rising star. His Frieze-week solo show Winter Remembers April at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery – named after Wynton Marsalis’s interpretation of the jazz standard I’ll Remember April – featured large-scale, cinematic scenes: figures circling a bonfire in Blackbirds Singing in the Dead of Night; in the more surreal Just slow down, don’t you know that the revolution will be televised?, a suited Black figure rises from the ground in blurred sequence as koi carp swim around him. The paintings follow their own logic. “I’m not trying to depict real life, but I’m not chasing surrealism either. It’s my own world, with its own gravity and laws, ones I can break and reform. A painting doesn’t owe the viewer a comfortable reality.”
Much of the inspiration comes from books – Han Kang, Zadie Smith, Yukio Mishima, or García Márquez are all favourite writers – where an image or line might spark a thought: “‘Wouldn’t it be cool if…?’ Then you gather references, take photos, build it out.” Music is also central to the work, and not just the titles. A jazz guitarist and double bassist himself, Whyte always paints while listening to Earl Sweatshirt, Tendai, Bill Evans, Joy Crookes, or Kofi Stone. “If I’m left in silence, my brain keeps going in a way that feels uncomfortable. Music dulls the noise.” But it’s strictly albums, not playlists. “Same with an artist’s practice; one amazing painting is great, but it’s about bodies of work. Where are those points where you’re pushing it or experimenting?”
After a recent show with White Cube in Hong Kong, Whyte opens his first UK institutional solo show, Shattered Dreams, in April at Wolverhampton Art Gallery, in his home city. “It had to be Wolverhampton,” he says enthusiastically. “I’m so proud. I might proverbially be a North Londoner now, support Arsenal, and my accent has softened, but Wolves is Wolves! London is a hub of creativity and opportunity, yes, but it’s made up of people from everywhere else,” he continues, name-checking Black Brits from the Midlands: Wesley Joseph from Birmingham, Omari Douglas from Wolverhampton, Jorja Smith from Walsall. ”Any time you experience even an iota of success, you become ‘a British artist based in London’, and everything about your family history gets flattened – like the migration patterns that allowed those great-grandchildren to be who they are. My Hong Kong show, Nine Nights, came after my grandfather’s passing. In the paintings, I was thinking about moving through that mourning period, thinking about him, my Blackness, Jamaica, and what it means to be Jamaican in Britain generations after Windrush. I want more of that. I’m not trying to speak for everyone – I’m trying to tell a story, failing at it, then re-evaluating. Through that failed expression, people understand you better. I don’t have a manifesto of Blackness. It’s more like: ‘huh?’ then ‘what?’ That returns to the materiality of painting, it’s figuring things out in real time. It’s trying to turn those questions and feelings into something solid.”
