Artists Statement
"Let every mark be a thought and every thought be a clear one’
I was born in 1968 in Hammersmith, West London to parents of Guyanese and Jamaican descent. My parents arrived in England from the Caribbean in the late 1950s. My mother worked as a machinist in a clothing factory, my father worked at the Firestone tyre factory.
As a child, I explored the history of painting through books and visits to the National Gallery where I would copy the paintings I admired the most, work by Gainsborough, Van Dyck, Rembrandt and Caravaggio. It had not escaped my notice that there were hardly any paintings depicting black people as individuals, although I knew there had been sizeable black communities living throughout Europe for centuries. Rather than put me off, this gap in Britain’s cultural canon actually served to inspire me.
In 1988 I moved to Manchester to study Fine Art at Manchester Polytechnic. I moved back to London to take up a Masters degree at the Slade School of Fine Art in 1991. On graduating from the Slade, I remained in London, where I continue to live and work.
The genre I have chosen to paint in becomes politically loaded when the painter and subject are both black, as historically oil painting has been assumed to be the domain of those in power: the elite of Western society. Paintings were commissioned to act as the material embodiment of sovereignty, wealth and imperial power - depicting life not as it was, but rather as their patron wished it to be seen.
Western Art has traditionally objectified non-white peoples as anonymous characters. They were included in paintings as ethnographic specimen or racially fetishized archetype to add exotic charm to a scene, or, in portraiture specifically, to function as a human commodity (a slave or servant) to elevate the stature of the aristocrat depicted.
My work inverts this structure. Rather than contributing to public aggrandisement of people of known status, I aim to endow that which is under-represented, undervalued or ignored in our society with the status they deserve through their becoming the subject of a painting.
Education
Art Education
1991-1993
Slade School of Fine Art
University College London.
Postgraduate Higher Diploma
1989-1991 Manchester Polytechnic, BA (Hons) Fine Art 2.1
1987-1988 Heatherlys School of Fine Art, Foundation Course
Exhibitions
Des Haughton has exhibited at numerous shows, including the following:
2002 Sotheby’s , still life exhibition
2001 Elizabeth Greensheilds Award.
1999 National Portrait Gallery, BP Awards.
1999 Elizabeth Greensheilds Award.
1998 National Portrait Gallery, BP Awards.
1997 Royal Society of Portrait Painters, Mall Galleries, London.
1996 Group Exhibition, Lucy Simmonds Gallery, Hong Kong.
1995 Hunting Art Prize Travel Award Winner.
1994 Young Artist of the Year Award, Mall Galleries, London
1992 Holden Gallery, Manchester, First Prize for Drawing, Manchester, England.
1991 Young Artist Prize, Manchester Academy, Manchester, England.Hunting Art Prize Winner
