“It's not some sort of inspiration where you're touched by God and then you work like a madman”, said artist Shaqúelle Whyte.
“The process in which you make a painting is alchemy. It's mud, it's oil, it's pigment, it's all these different things”.
I spoke to Whyte weeks into his show at Hong Kong’s White Cube. Later in the year, he’ll return to the UK for an exhibition closer to home.
The 25-year-old grew up in Wolverhampton and now lives and works in East London, with a studio in Dalston. He attended the Slade School of Fine Art followed by the Royal College of Art, a prestigious education which gave him his solid foundation in classical techniques.
“That focus on material means you have to look at what came before you”, he told East End Review.
“I always enjoyed art. It's been very much a process of failing upwards, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. But you don't go to art school imagining that you're going to be fortunate enough to have a career in art, as a painter.
“My work does sit within the canon of work that came before me, and work that will come after me. But I look at a range of things”.
“It's two plus two making seven. You read a book or a passage of something, maybe by Salman Rushdie or by Yukio Mishima, or Morning and Evening by Jon Fosse... and you'll be thinking about your own life, and then you come to finding references, creating references, drawing, and then you come to the canvas, and you come to the canvas without an ego, and then all the references fall to one side, and you start painting”.
He added: “For me, the studio is not this mythic place. You have your cup of tea, you sit down, you get to work, and you leave.
“It's a commitment to practice. It's not some sort of inspiration where you're touched by God and then you work like a madman, it's the consistency of being here and turning up, failing, and coming back the next day”.
Whyte is now looking forward to a homecoming exhibition at Wolverhampton Art Gallery in April.
“I'm from Wolves, you know what I mean?” he said. “To come back and do a show in my home city, with my people… I'm excited about it.
“There are a lot of amazing artists creatives that have come out of the Midlands, but because this country's capital is London, often you get folded into representing the UK [and being described as a] London-based artist.
“But I'm from Wolves. I'm still a part of the community and still owe my career to the people and to the place that I came from”.
But despite being a proud, self-proclaimed ‘Yam’, Whyte has found a community he cherishes in London. He had his first studio on Ridley Road before moving to a larger space in Arcola Street, and in that time he has come to see the East End as his own.
“Dalston feels like home”, he told me. “There's a massive Jamaican and Black community here. Walking around Dalson is hearing Yardies. It's African food, it's Jamaican food… it's life. It feels like the communities I grew up in back home in Wolverhampton.
“I love it here. Though I'm not from London, as much as I can be a Londoner, the part of London that is mine is East. I feel like a proper East Londoner”.
