Winston Branch searches for colour and light in large-scale artworks in London

Winston Branch received his OBE last year in 2024, marking decades of work in the arts and his contribution to art in the UK. After moving here at the tender age of twelve, Branch began his formal art education at The Slade (where he was taught by artists including Keith Vaughan, Frank Auerbach and Euan Uglow) before embarking on a lifelong career as an artist. His first solo exhibition took place in 1967 at experimental space Arts Lab, which was also host to John Lennon and Yoko Ono and David Bowie.

In person, Branch is dapper and eloquent when we meet to speak after the opening of his new exhibition ‘Out of the Calabash’ at Goodman Gallery, London. In a return to very large-scale work, which he abandoned shortly after leaving The Slade, Branch is showing a series of abstract works that continue to explore his decades-long investigation into light and perspective through colour and surface.

He has lived all over the world, from California to Italy and Germany and says, 'You’ve got to go where the weather suits your clothes. If something isn’t working, you have to pick it up and go somewhere else.' That being said Branch, now 78, is back in London and back on Cork Street.

Although he started his career as a figurative painter, he began to have a dialogue with history painting through colour, which led him to start working with abstraction. In his words, he wanted to abandon narrative, leaving only colour and light to work with. 'I wanted to omit the narrative concept of painting and use the expressionistic element of the luminosity of light,' he says.

The title of the exhibition, a reference to his Caribbean roots, reminds us that although Branch came to London as a child, his roots are in a very different place. 'Colour is light, and light is feeling. If you get out and stand in the street, depending on the light, it will affect your mood.'

In this exhibition Branch wants to envelop the viewer in colour and light, using both the size of the paintings and a technical use of colour that create dimensions in the paintings. The colours he uses, from bright pinks to yellows and golds, to deep blues, tell their own stories.

'I don’t believe in looking back because it clouds the vision, but what I have learned is how to give myself the structure to pursue my vision. I am pursuing the eponymous nature of paint,' Branch explains. 'You look into the painting. You felt that you were embraced by the painting. You were not standing looking at it, you were enveloped in it.'

There is something deeply traditional in this radically academic approach to painting. Looking into the works, you can see a Turner-esque use of yellow and a classical use of perspective. Prior to adopting abstraction in 1982, his work was inspired by iconography, but following this he became interested in the ‘humanity of colour’ stating that ‘light is life’.

Out of the Calabash is on view at Goodman Gallery, London until 14^th January 2026

goodman-gallery.com