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Painting (MA)

Shaquelle Whyte

My painting is a way for me to explore thoughts and feelings that I have and manifest them into paint. Through paint, I direct my subjects as if they were actors and the canvas on the stage, manoeuvring and moulding stories that reflect my life, thoughts and feelings while not pictorially representing myself within the work. This in turn allows me to mobilize the nature of the work and in many ways tell stories in a much more abstract way; not feeding the viewer the whole story but leaving enough in my work that indicates the story. It also allows me to indulge in the surreal, which is an element of my work that I am pushing more and more the more that my body of work grows. The physicality of paint is essential when approaching my work. The differentiation between the thickness of paint, and the inherent texture that comes from it allows me to push further what it is that I can do. In the pursuit of this oil pastel has become a feature in my work. It has allowed me to bring back elements of drawing into my work. Oil pastel weaves in and out of the oil paint which frees up the process of how I represent elements of the figure and scene that I’m trying to create.

Rat Dreamz 

200x220

Oil paint, pastel and spray paint on canvas. 

Shut the door, I’m playing Revolver.
220cmx220cm

Shaquelle Whyte (b. 2000, Wolverhampton, UK) is a figurative painter whose enigmatic works explore the human condition whilst exploring the material qualities of paint. Working from found images and his own photographs, drawings, and writings, he creates narratives for the characters within his tableaux. The figures in Whyte’s paintings are real people in fictional scenarios who act as a foil for his own innermost thoughts. The imagined worlds he creates are familiar and mysterious and invite viewers to bring their own interpretations to the encounter. Using a visual language of recurring motifs, he explores non-linear storytelling as the extracted details of his expansive worlds appear across multiple works. Whyte completed a Fine Art degree at The Slade School of Fine Art. The artist is also signed to Pippy Houldsworth Gallery.

figure sat on the stairs, still but still in motion, two blurred cats look up at him .

Medium:

Oil paint on canvas

Size:

160x180cm
subject is sat next to a sofa surrounded by dirty plates. Candles hang in the air while a black cat skulks through the painting
The Vigil

Medium:

Oil paint on canvas

Size:

140x180cm
full image of painting
Ophelia's reprieve
snippet of the painting
Ophelia's reprieve

Medium:

Oil paint on canvas

Size:

150x150cm
Figure smoking while  secondary. characters pass him on the stairs. A cat watches over the scene
Half way up the stairs

Medium:

Oil paint and spray paint on canvas

Size:

250x250cm

Pippy Houldsworth

The artist biography via there galleries website- Pippy Houldsworth Gallery