Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs: we are faced with a painter who has chosen to go beyond the conventions of the visible to reveal the secret architecture of pure sensation. Winston Branch, born in 1947 in St. Lucia and trained in the London studios of the 1960s, embodies this generation of artists who have been able to transform abstraction into a universal language, capable of speaking directly to our most intimate fibers.
When Branch states: “Painting for me consists of taking an amorphous substance like paint and transforming it into an illusory image, thus evoking the sensuality of feeling. Color is light, and through color I express my humanity”, he immediately reveals the philosophical dimension of his enterprise. For it is not simply a matter of painting, but of transmuting raw material into a transcendent experience.
His geographical journey, from St. Lucia to London, then from Berlin to California, passing through New York, maps out contemporary artistic exploration. Graduating from the Slade School of Fine Art in 1970, Branch quickly established himself as an exceptional talent by winning the prestigious British Prix de Rome, awarded among others by the Royal Academy. This classical training provided him with the necessary technical foundations, but it is his gradual break with figuration that reveals his true singularity.
Critic Carlos Diaz Sosa perfectly captures this dimension when he describes Branch’s canvases as “abstract paintings with fresh, cloudy colors that have a quality allowing the viewer to explore the depths of the mind. Branch uses painting as a symbol, a purely aesthetic language, an illustration of the spirit”.
The Revelation of Clyfford Still and the Legacy of Abstract Expressionism
It was during his stay in New York, thanks to a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1978, that Branch experienced a true artistic epiphany in the face of Clyfford Still’s works. As he himself recounts: “There was an incredible exhibition of Clyfford Still. It blew me away, the paintings covered enormous walls. I thought, that’s it, I’m going to do that”. This encounter with American Abstract Expressionism became decisive in his artistic evolution.
Still’s influence on Branch goes beyond the mere question of scale. Clyfford Still, a major figure of the New York School alongside Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, had developed a radically new approach to abstraction as early as the 1940s. Still sought to create what he called “the vertical necessity of life”, a painting that evokes the existential struggle of the human spirit against the forces of nature.
This philosophical dimension resonates deeply with Branch, who transposes this quest for the sublime into his own canvases. But where Still favored dramatic contrasts between darkness and light, Branch develops a more nuanced, atmospheric approach. His compositions reveal a particular sensitivity to chromatic transitions, to subtle passages between tones that evoke less confrontation than communion.
The legacy of American Abstract Expressionism in Branch’s work is not limited to the appropriation of certain techniques. It is a true spiritual lineage with that generation of artists who, in the post-war period, sought to reinvent pictorial language to express the existential questions of their time. Like Still, Branch refuses any concession to narrative or decorative elements. His painting aims for the essential: the direct expression of emotion through the pure materiality of color.
This influence is also manifested in his conception of the studio as a laboratory. Branch explains: “In a sense, a painter is like a scientist and his studio is his laboratory”. This experimental approach, inherited from the Abstract Expressionists, makes each canvas a research project, an exploration of the infinite possibilities of color and form.
The monumentality of Still’s works finds a more intimate but no less powerful transposition in Branch’s paintings. His canvases, often of more modest format, possess that characteristic ability to envelop the viewer of American art of the 1950s. They create a total sensory environment, inviting immersion rather than distant contemplation.
Turner and the Tradition of British Light
In parallel with this American lineage, Branch fits into a specifically British tradition of light painting, of which J.M.W. Turner remains the tutelary figure. This dual influence reveals the richness of his cultural background and partly explains the originality of his approach.
Turner, the undisputed master of watercolor and a pioneer of modern abstraction, had developed a revolutionary approach to color as early as the beginning of the 19th century. His late watercolors, particularly those made during his travels in Switzerland and Venice, remarkably anticipate the research of contemporary art. Branch himself acknowledges this lineage: “He totally obliterated all reality. It was just cadmium yellow and bursts of red”, referring to Turner’s late watercolors.
This reference to Turner is not anecdotal. It reveals in Branch a deep understanding of the history of British painting and its specificities. Turner had been the first to systematically exploit the effects of transparency and chromatic superposition, creating those famous “veils of color” that seem to float on the surface of the canvas. Branch takes up and updates this technique in his contemporary acrylics.
The Turnerian legacy in Branch is also manifested in his relationship with nature. Like Turner, who found in atmospheric phenomena an inexhaustible source of inspiration, Branch draws from his experience of Caribbean landscapes an exceptionally rich chromatic palette. His blues evoke the ocean depths, his yellows the violence of the tropical sun, his reds the incandescence of sunsets under equatorial latitudes.
But Branch does not merely transpose these visual experiences. He metamorphoses them, transfigures them through the painting process itself. Like Turner in his late works, he reaches that dimension where painting ceases to be representation and becomes pure presence, pure color intensity.
Branch’s technique, which consists of superimposing layers of acrylic while maintaining gestural spontaneity, recalls Turner’s innovations in the art of watercolor. This mastery of transparency and opacity, of fluidity and density, creates those effects of depth and luminosity that characterize his best works.
Turner’s influence can also be seen in the very concept Branch has of his art. For Turner, painting had to “express the moods of nature” according to the words of John Ruskin. Branch transposes this ambition into the realm of contemporary abstraction, seeking to express no longer the moods of external nature, but those of inner nature, of human consciousness and sensitivity.
This filiation with Turner also explains Branch’s success with British collectors. The Tate Britain, which houses the most important collection of Turner’s works, logically acquired in 2017 Branch’s major work, “Zachary II”. This institutional recognition consecrates Branch as the legitimate heir to the great British pictorial tradition.
The Geographical Odyssey and the Construction of Artistic Identity
Branch’s journey perfectly illustrates this geography of contemporary art where influences intersect and mutually enrich each other. Born in St. Lucia, trained in London, successively residing in Rome, Berlin, New York and California, Branch embodies this figure of the nomadic artist characteristic of the second half of the 20th century.
Each stage of this journey contributes to the enrichment of his pictorial language. Rome brings him mastery of the classical tradition and understanding of great historical painting. Berlin, thanks to the DAAD program, offers him the space and freedom necessary for experimentation. New York confronts him with contemporary avant-gardes. California allows him to develop a more hedonistic and luminous approach to color.
But it is perhaps his regular return to St. Lucia that best reveals the deep coherence of his approach. For Branch does not flee his origins, he transfigures them. The Caribbean light, the tropical colors, the chromatic intensity of his childhood landscapes directly nourish his abstract painting.
This ability to synthesize seemingly contradictory influences constitutes one of Branch’s major strengths. He reconciles European heritage and American innovation, British tradition and tropical exuberance, conceptual rigor and sensorial abandon.
Branch’s work is characterized by a particular relationship to pictorial matter. Using mainly acrylic, a medium that allows for quick drying and transparency effects, he develops a personal technique of superimposing colored layers.
This technical approach reveals a deeply original philosophy of painting. For Branch, color is not ornament but substance. It does not decorate, it constitutes. Each canvas thus becomes an exploration of the expressive possibilities of pure color, freed from any representational function.
His compositions reveal an exceptional mastery of chromatic relationships. Blues dialogue with oranges, yellows vibrate against purples, creating dynamic tensions that keep the eye constantly alert. But this technical virtuosity is never gratuitous. It serves an artistic project of considerable ambition: to reveal the invisible, to give form to the inexpressible.
Heritage and Recognition
Today, at nearly eighty years old, Branch finally enjoys the recognition he deserves. The acquisition of “Zachary II” by the Tate, the exhibitions at the Cahiers d’Art gallery in Paris, the important sales at Christie’s and Sotheby’s consecrate a work of exemplary coherence.
This late recognition is partly explained by the resistances of the art market to a work that refuses easy categorizations. Branch belongs to no school, claims no movement. His art draws from the most diverse sources to create an absolutely personal language.
But it is precisely this independence that constitutes his strength. In an artistic world often dominated by fashion trends and commercial strategies, Branch represents the figure of the authentic artist, faithful to his inner vision.
For Branch embodies above all this cardinal virtue of the true artist: persistence. Persistence in research, persistence in experimentation, persistence in remaining true to oneself despite misunderstandings and material difficulties.
His example reminds us that true art is not born out of ease, but from the constant confrontation with the resistance of matter and the demand for expression. Each of Branch’s canvases testifies to this daily struggle to wrest from color and form their most intimate secret.
This persistence finds its reward in the exceptional quality of his latest works. The recent paintings reveal an artist who has reached full maturity, able to synthesize in a few gestures the experience of a life dedicated to art.
Branch’s work perfectly illustrates this paradox of contemporary art: the more an artist deepens his singularity, the more he touches the universal. By exploring the most intimate resources of his sensitivity, Branch creates a language that speaks to every viewer.
His canvases possess that rare quality of true art: they resist the exhaustion of the gaze. One can contemplate them endlessly, constantly discovering new color relationships, new harmonies. They offer that experience of pure contemplation sought by the ancient masters.
For Branch has been able to reconnect with the spiritual ambition of traditional art while using the language of modernity. His abstract paintings regain that meditative function, that capacity for elevation possessed by the sacred works of the past.
Branch’s pedagogical influence deserves to be highlighted. As a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and Kansas State University, he has trained many artists who perpetuate his teaching today. This transmission reveals an essential dimension of his work: his generosity.
For Branch does not jealously guard his technical secrets. He shares them, explains them, transmits them. This openness testifies to a noble conception of art as the common heritage of humanity.
His former students unanimously testify to his ability to reveal in each person their particular expressive potentialities. Rather than imposing a method, Branch knew how to adapt his teaching to the personality of each student.
The Light of St. Lucia
We must return, in the end, to this original source that constitutes St. Lucia in Branch’s imagination. This island, disputed between France and England, colonized and liberated, offers a perfect metaphor for the contemporary condition: multiple identity, complex belonging, richness born of diversity.
Branch has been able to transform this identity complexity into creative strength. Instead of suffering it as a constraint, he assumes it as a wealth. His painting synthesizes the most diverse influences without ever losing its profound coherence.
The tropical light of his childhood continues to irrigate his London canvases. This faithfulness to the origin, transfigured by art, perhaps constitutes the secret of his particular genius.
Today, Branch declares that he wants to ‘write his name on the register of British culture.’ This legitimate wish for full recognition should not hide the essential fact: Branch has already written his name in the history of contemporary art. His canvases will long testify to this obstinate quest for pure beauty, this exemplary faithfulness to the very essence of painting.
For Winston Branch reminds us of this fundamental truth: painting is not dead. It transforms, evolves, renews itself, but remains that irreplaceable art which allows man to give visible form to his most secret dreams.
- Winston Branch official website, “About Winston”, winstonbranch.com, visited in July 2025
- Carlos Diaz Sosa, quoted on the official website of Winston Branch and various sources
- Cedric Bardawil, “In the studio with Winston Branch”, cedricbardawil.com, 2023
- Interview in House Collective, “Abstract Soul: The legendary artist Winston Branch”, 2025
- Cedric Bardawil, “In the studio with Winston Branch”, cedricbardawil.com, 2023
- Christie’s, “The bewitching canvases of Winston Branch”, September 2023
