We cannot erase historical injustices, but we can reclaim territory denied us through challenging popular preconceptions as to what ‘black’ art can be.
Des Haughton lives and works in London. Born in 1968 to parents who arrived in England as part of the Windrush generation, his mother was from Guyana and his father from Jamaica. Since he was a young boy, Haughton became fascinated by drawing and painting. In 1993, Haughton graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art with a postgraduate Higher Diploma.
Inspired by the works of the old masters, Haughton was aware of a lack of representation of people of colour except to add exotic charm to a scene or in portraiture as a slave or servant. He observed that 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. The genre Haughton has chosen to paint in becomes politically loaded when the painter and subject are both black. He is best known for his superb self-portraits and commissions of writer Angela Levy and cricketer Brian Lara. However, recently he has embarked on a new series of work depicting history through landscape and flora.
He says, We cannot erase historical injustices, but we can reclaim territory denied us through challenging popular preconceptions as to what ‘black’ art can be. I aim to express the duality of my own experience; the sense of being both part of the English environment I was born into yet also displaced from it - connected to the Caribbean culture of my parents with its traditions, values, and historical inheritance.
Haughton has exhibited in museums: Hull City Museum (Autumn 2024), Southhampton City Museum and Art Gallery, Standard Charter Bank, Royal Academy, Birmingham Museum, Lord's cricket ground, Hartlepool Museum, BP Awards National Portrait Gallery,
