In the studio with painter Denzil Forrester
‘When I first got here, I went down to my local beach to paint it, thinking that I must paint Cornwall,’ describes Denzil Forrester, who, with his wife – the artist Phillippa Clayden – moved from London to Truro in 2016. ‘But I just wasn’t feeling it,’ he continues. ‘And so I added Three Wicked Men.’
The first iteration of Three Wicked Men – now in the Tate collection – was made in 1982, while Denzil was still a student at the Royal College of Art. He would take his sketchbook to nightclubs in Dalston and around Victoria Park, where ‘life was happening in front of me; I’d do about 50-60 drawings a night, A1-sized, each taking the time of a record, maybe two’. By day, he attended the inquest into the death in police custody of Winston Rose, his neighbour, which was eventually ruled as an ‘unlawful killing’ by the coroner. The incongruity merged in vast, high-octane paintings, which fused the London reggae and dub scene – crowded dance floors caught up by the transcendental power of DJ Jah Shaka, ‘which felt like home’ – with the threat of persecution felt by the Caribbean community.
It was not easy. ‘If you’re living in the area where things are happening, you get taken in. My salvation was painting,’ he says. ‘I could go anywhere in Europe and see beauty and have a good time.’ The subject matter did not change, but Italian light impacted his palette and El Greco’s The Burial of the Count of Orgaz influenced his compositions.
He explains that he and Phillippa moved to Cornwall ‘because we love it, but I keep painting what’s inside me’. His purposebuilt studio – ‘the height and breadth of my canvases’ – is in the garden of their terraced Georgian house. On one wall, when we visit, is a painting featuring Chris Kaba, the 24-year-old, unarmed black man from Wembley, who was shot dead by police in Streatham in September 2022. Another work depicts ‘Child Q’, the 15-year-old black girl who was strip-searched at an east London school in the presence of male officers, after she was wrongly accused of possessing drugs.
Ever present in his work is the contrast between the tragedy of the circumstances and the compelling, gestural energy of its depiction. Recently, Denzil has been travelling to Jamaica in February each year: ‘The clubs in Kingston are like the clubs in London were in the Eighties. You only get one life – you have to feel the joy.’
New works by Denzil Forrester are being shown at Stephen Friedman Gallery, W1, until April 8: stephenfriedman.com
Joshua Monaghan1/6Featuring Kaba (2022)
Joshua Monaghan2/6A study of the late Grenadian revolutionary Maurice Bishop, who appears in several of Denzil’s 2021 paintings, above a pile of works and catalogues
Joshua Monaghan3/6The artist’s brushes
Joshua Monaghan4/6Detail of Ma Pets (2022)
Joshua Monaghan5/6Photographs of historical paintings by Denzil
Joshua Monaghan6/6Denzil in his purpose-built garden studio at home in Cornwall
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