Artist Shaqúelle Whyte is a master of storytelling at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery

Shaqúelle Whyte may be early in his career, but his richly atmospheric paintings have quickly pegged him as a rising star in the art world. Born in Wolverhampton, Whyte graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2022, going on to receive an MA from the Royal College of Art in 2023. Group exhibitions at Hauser & Wirth, Somerset, and Grimm Amsterdam followed, as well as solo exhibitions at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery (his current show ending 8 November 2025).

Whyte is now settled in London, working on figurative paintings in his Dalston studio that are united by a strong storytelling. Each painting, a fluid capturing of a moment in time, is its own fully formed scene. Whyte’s works are ambiguous – he sets the theatrical stage and leaves it for the viewer to decipher.

In his recent exhibition at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, ‘Winter Remembers April’, Whyte considered themes of time and history, criss-crossing between the past and the present. Naming the show in tribute to Wynton Marsalis’ recording of the jazz standard, ‘I’ll Remember April’, Whyte celebrates both the musicians who are central to him and the physicality of composition itself, focusing on the scale and perspective of the figures as they move through his canvases.

Artistically, music is key for Whyte, becoming a rhythmic counterpart to the fluid and evocative scenes he creates. ‘Music keeps me sane in the studio,’ he says. ‘For me, song titles, certain genres or artists can inspire thoughts, ideas and feelings that just resonate. It helps me paint, especially when I'm tired and frustrated with my work, and everything that surrounds it. And of course, what I listen to finds its way into the painting, whether that's Earl Sweatshirt or Sampha or Boris Gardiner. Music energises me, it calms me.’

The elusive cinematic quality it holds becomes a part of the paintings. Whyte’s canvases place figures in narrative settings we can’t quite grasp – are they running towards or away from something, are they dancing or fighting? His figures are both familiar and unknowable. Drawn in thick brush marks and translated onto richly textured surfaces, the liminal worlds he creates may be hazy, but the memories and emotions are sharp, his interior narratives becoming lush, cinematic compositions that hover on the edge of comprehension. Whyte offers fragments – a hand poised mid-gesture, a gaze half averted – and invites you to do the assembling.

In the flesh, Whyte’s canvases are life-sized, their generous proportions a playful spin on perception. Throughout, the focus is firmly on the Black figure vividly living: reclining, running, dancing. In composition and colour, the works are synonymous with classical artworks, rife with historical references. By reframing the traditional style, Whyte inserts the Black figure into the work. ‘References to Rubens, to George Stubbs, to Tintoretto all appear in these works, and these 'traditional' artists are naturally touchstones for me,’ Whyte adds. ‘This may sound quite simplistic, but because I'm Black, I also wanted to make paintings with people that look like me. Within the canon of painting, there isn't enough work that's just OK with being, as opposed to carrying the weight of history.’

In interrogating the way Black masculinity has been represented in art and culture, Whyte rewrites it entirely, and his celebration of the body is very human. The ambiguity that runs throughout adds to this – often, we are denied seeing the face of his figures, suggesting a rich interiority we can only guess at. ‘My work isn’t ignorant of history, but rather by leaving it open to interpretation, I try not to be prescriptive,’ says Whyte. ‘I try not to apply any single thought or specific feeling to my paintings.’

'Winter Remembers April' is at Pippy Houldsworth until 8 November 2025

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