The revered British artist Winston Branch invites you to experience a deeper sense of self in a major retrospective at Cahiers d’Art
The septuagenarian artist Winston Branch (OBE) has spent a lifetime creating works that oscillate effortlessly between ethereal radiance and wild tempest, producing paintings that unfold like vast visual poems, where presence and absence coexist in delicate optical balance. His retrospective at Cahiers d’Art offers an incredible window into the evolution of his soul, presenting works from the early 1980s to the present day that underline his peerless talent. The Luminous Gesture is his first exhibition in France since his much-lauded 1982 solo presentation at the 12th Biennale de Paris, where he represented his birthplace Saint Lucia. The show brilliantly exemplifies how the contemporary of Hockney, who studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in the 1960s, forged a singular path in contemporary abstraction, resulting in works that are now held in the collections of Tate Britain, The V&A and The British Museum. His layered surfaces, gestural spontaneity, and search for transcendence through form reflect a deep engagement with post-war abstraction and demonstrate his singular mastery of the colour spectrum – subtle tonal shifts emerging from canvases bathed in ephemeral light, and pulsing with a vibrant intensity that brilliantly conveys emotion. In this interview for PORT, the artist tells us why he believes a painter has more in common with a scientist than one might imagine, and offers unique insight into why his work continues to evolve, surprise and illuminate.
Can you recall what set you out on the path of being a painter?
I do not know why I became a painter. I want to say a pathological desire was there but, actually, it was just a process of what draws you towards something. I think what was interesting for me was to explore unknown territories and to explore one’s imagination. And I think that when you explore your imagination, you immediately become a bit of an outsider, because you don’t conform within the parameters of society. After all, conformity just means that everybody accepts the status quo – people who are not thinking but simply memorising because they are robotic. I suppose one always deviated from that.
Why do you think you wanted to step away from conformity?
I think I was just following a rationale of intuitiveness. One tends to make a gesture and then, much later, one rationalises it, which is a cognizant way of dealing with a situation. If I were to reflect, then I think coming from an almost dogmatic form of Catholicism in Saint Lucia provided a guidance of sorts – I was a Corpus Christi acolyte at school and was drawn to the symbolism of it all, and even considered the notion of taking holy orders. But why we do what we do is essentially always impulsive and intuitive. We have to rationalise it on reflection, of course, because we are supposedly the thinking species. But, essentially, we are animals and we have instinct, and I think it was simply the instinctiveness of exploration that propelled me to become a painter.
In the exploration of inner space, presumably you were forging your identity?
Yes, because you become a space cadet. You have to set parameters – of course – you have to find guidelines that allow you to go forward otherwise it becomes chaotic, and can even become insanity. So, you have to have some form of structure. That’s why one learned about the whole history of art, so as to have pointers and guides. And that process is always constructive, because in order to have any kind of substantial contribution towards the visual language you must begin unlearning what you have learned, and forge a new way of thinking. In the very embryonic stages you are exploring in order to find your medium, and I found that what interested me the most was exploration within the three-dimensional surface of the canvas. One then had to really learn the visual language to understand what one was looking at, before one could begin to explore it. In a sense, a painter is like a scientist and one’s studio is one’s laboratory.
I love the idea that the studio is a laboratory outside of the world. Why were you drawn ever more to the abstraction of form?
You have to be outside of the world, and outside the normal status quo, in order to reinterpret. Why abstraction? Well, my greatest passion is simply to rediscover the tonalities of possibilities within the spectrum of the primary colours. Because, except for the absolutes of black and white, there are only three primary colours, and out of these three primary colours, you make the spectrum that provides for the whole range of analysis, and that is something I am very interested in. I’m not interested in narrative. I’m interested in feeling. I’m not interested in any form of social commentary.
What do you mean when you say you are interested in feeling over narrative?
When I say painting is about feeling, it is because feeling is about light, and light gives you the luminosity of inner vision – you take a deep breath, you inhale, you exhale and you have to take time before you can begin to form an explanation of what you are experiencing. For me, it is never about what the painting means, it’s all about how it makes you feel when you respond to the colour palette, and to really feel that, you have to try to get away from the baggage that you bring to the painting. This is why I go back to the spirituality that was there in my Catholic upbringing, and the deeper sense of being; I’m trying to get you to experience your own self by responding to the canvas.
Is there any particular artist that shaped your creative consciousness?
A good painter makes you want to paint and shows you what is possible. The artist I gravitated to most as a young man was Clyfford Still – a West Coast artist who was not very popular. His work was just monumental, and once I had encountered it, I thought to myself, ‘That is the mountain I am going to climb!’ At some point, I saw a very early painting of his at the Tate – long before it became Tate Britain – that was almost entirely blue, and it just sat deep in my subconscious. You could feel the raw sensuality of the paint, and I was completely drawn to that. I use painting in its autonomy. When I put blue on a canvas, I’m not putting it for sky. I’m putting it for blue. A painter doesn’t want to paint what everybody has seen and experienced. He wants to find his own vision and his own symbolic language. His interpretation of how one relates to the world, because that’s what makes one stand out.
Does your show at Cahiers d’Art represent a kind of full circle for you? How has your work evolved since your infamous show in Paris in the 80s?
Well, I think it can’t be the same, because a lot has happened in my life. I’m a man of the world, and I’m a thinking person. When I showed in Paris in the early 80s, even though the work was beginning to move away from representation, it wasn’t as sophisticated as it is now because of all the experiences that one has endured over time. As artists, we always try to have the innocence of a child, because you want to see the world the way a child can see it, but we can’t, really. All I can hope to do is enhance who I am by embracing all the various cultures and travels I have experienced and fusing them in the canon of my own personal exploration. That is what I share when I paint. I share my vision, and my vision isn’t absolute, because it’s always moving and changing
Do you believe that an artist ever reaches a zenith of their talent?
I think only when you die have you reached the zenith of anything. Only death will be absolute. I can’t think about the zenith of my career because it would mean I have nothing more to do, or say or experience. People who have known me have said, ‘Slow down Winston, you are not a young man.’ But I say, what does that mean? I don’t feel any different than I felt at 19, when one was a burning wheel of ambition, and I am still a very happy person when I am in the studio. I have spent long durations of my life by myself with just paint and a piece of paper for company, and it’s still just as exciting to paint now, because I never know where it’ll end up. I have never painted for victory or glory. I paint for paint. I think the only difference is that when you become nearer to death, you limit how you spend your time more, because you know how precious time is. I’m closer to dying, than I am closer to living, because all the years I’ve had are already behind me, not ahead of me. One doesn’t want to waste time.
The Luminous Gesture is on view at Cahiers d’Art, Paris, until 30 April 2025
