Warwick Samuel Figurative Paintings
I have always enjoyed landscape painting and have built on that experience to create works which place figures within evocative landscapes. The interplay between character and environment can, I believe, influence the viewer’s responses to both.
My process is to paint series of related works, in order to explore the shared motifs in depth from varying visual and emotional perspectives.
Religious Series
In common with many generations of artists, I am fascinated by Bible stories and their underlying themes of humanity’s moral strengths and weaknesses. For example, many works from the Renaissance depict these stories, sometimes on huge canvases, and while we can still admire the brilliance of their composition and execution, I believe that the historic clothing and romanticised scenery may distance the viewer from the emotions evoked by the scenes and sometimes from the sheer brutality represented.
The brutality of religious persecution is of course part of our world today, in the Middle East and elsewhere, and this has been a major influence on me in creating this series of paintings. There is not a single religion that has not aroused violence and discord at some point during its history. I have tried to shock the viewer into a visceral understanding of this terrible reality through the transposition of Biblical motifs into more familiar, modern, urban surroundings.
I know the council estates of Manchester well; they provide the backdrop for some of these works. In the Triptych the background is the same in all three paintings. In ‘Burial’ a makeshift crucifix on a lamp-post and a hint of a Shell garage can be seen in the distance: the railings and crucifix are seen in more detail in ‘Crucifixion’, the Shell garage in ‘Resurrection’. Even in the more celebratory images, such as the Annunciation, faint images of multiple crucifixes suggest the violence to be unleashed thereafter.
All paintings in the Triptych are oil on canvas, 152 cm x 102 cm. I am very fortunate to have a poem written by the Nationally renown poet Ailsa Holland on the Crucifixion painting.
And the Angel Gabriel met the Virgin Mary
Eventually age lost the will to keep fighting
Time Series
These studies explore the mystery of our perception of time. They were prompted by a childhood memory of walking to the shops on a very hot day, holding my mother’s hand. I was struck by the strange disconnect between the ordinariness of the day and the extraordinary vividness of my memory of it, when my recall of other—more dramatic, more recent—events have receded and faded.
All paintings are oil on canvas
Mood Series
These paintings are visual explorations of human emotions such as anxiety, despair and worry. I have endeavoured to be as honest and open as possible in the self-portraits.
Hindsight
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