About Winston

Winston Branch (born in 1947), an artist originally from Saint Lucia, works in both Europe and the Americas, maintaining a studio in California. Works by Branch are included in the collections of Tate Britain, the Legion of Honor De Young Museum in San Francisco, California, and the St Louis Museum of Art in Missouri. Branch was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1978, the British Prix de Rome, a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Fellowship to Berlin, a sponsorship to Belize from the Organization of American States, and was Artist in Residence at Fisk University in Tennessee. He has been a professor of fine arts and has taught at several art institutions in London and in the US. He has also worked as a theatrical set designer with various theater groups.

As described by art critic Carlos Diaz Sosa, Branch paints “abstract canvases in cool, cloudy colors that have a quality which allow the viewer to explore the depths of the mind. Branch uses paint like a symbol, a purely aesthetic language, an illustration of spirit.“

Early Years & Education

Born in Castries, Saint Lucia, Branch attended a Catholic school there, before being sent to London at the age of 12 in the 1960s. He explains: “My parents saw I had an aptitude for art and wanted to give me the best opportunity.” He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, where his talent was recognized early, and after graduating in 1970 he won the prestigious British Prix de Rome, enabling him at the age of 24 to attend the British School at Rome for a year (1971–72).

Critic Peter Selz notes: “Winston Branch … paintings suggest gardens, landscapes and seascapes, gardens in full bloom, the sky and clouds, the sea and it’s waves. They can be seen as the 21st century version of the great 19th century Romantic painters. Caspar David Frederick and Eugene Delacroix. (His) horizontal canvases evoke the sense of vast expanse. Done with a sweeping brush, they are the works of a daring colorist whose brilliant hues achieve a true iridescence.“

Branch has exhibited his work consistently since the 1960s, including at the Oakland Museum of California, the Alliance Francaise de San Francisco, the permanent collection of the Berkeley Art Museum, the 11th and 23rd São Paulo Art Biennial, Museo de Arte Moderno in São Paulo, the 4th Bienal de Pincture de Cuenca, Modern Art Museum (Cuenca, Ecuador) and the Biennale de Paris, Musée National d’Art Moderne and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

In 2010 he fell ill while at San Francisco International Airport waiting for a flight in order to exhibit work and give a lecture at the Museum of Modern Art in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and was cared for at the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, where following his recovery he held an exhibition entitled A Gift of Life (1 May–24 June 2011). /p>

Most recently, he was one of the artists featured prominently in No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960–1990 (July 2015–January 2016) at the City of London’s Guildhall Art Gallery, with three of his paintings hung at the entrance of the exhibition. One of the works shown was his painting West Indian — “a marked exception” to the non-figurative style now more typical of Branch — on loan from Rugby Borough Council’s respected collection of 20th- and 21st-century British art, which also includes works by L. S. Lowry, Barbara Hepworth, Stanley Spencer and Bridget Riley.