Denzil Forrester and Sanya Kantarovsky in conversation Because You’re Painting and Painting and Painting

Grenadian artist Denzil Forrester, a painter whose career went overlooked for thirty years, now resides in Cornwall, where he continues to document nightclub scenes through rhythmic and dynamic compositions. In conversation with painter Sanya Kantarovsky, they discuss capturing the energy of a dance hall crowd, Forrester’s days as an art student encountering modern masters, and past exhibitions at White Columns in New York and Tramps in London.

SANYA KANTAROVSKY
I’ve followed your work for about ten years now. When I first saw it at Tramps in London, I got completely absorbed by it. There’re so many things I want to talk to you about, but maybe a good place to start is something you mentioned to me: how strange it is, having painted for forty years and now all of this stuff is happening. I think it’s so incredible that your work is finally getting seen and you’re finally getting recognized for what you’ve been doing. How does that feel?

DENZIL FORRESTER
I couldn’t have planned the whole thing better. Because like I said, nothing happened for thirty years. I was teaching adult education at Morley College in London, part-time, two and a half, three days a week. Which was good, it meant I could paint as well. I retired at sixty. My partner and I are both painters. We decided to stop teaching, sell our house in London, buy a place in Cornwall, and just paint.

Anyway, in comes Mr. Peter Doig to the scene. In 2015 Peter Doig sent me an email, and it went into my junk mail, and my partner found it. I didn’t know much about Peter Doig. That’s the trouble, I was so engrossed in teaching and painting in my studio. I replied to Peter’s email. And then he sent back, “I’ve seen your painting over thirty years. I would like to see you and talk to you about your work if you’re still doing it.” So we met in Dalston in Hackney, where I grew up, Peter’s studio was not far. He had remembered my final show at the RCA in 1983—I was amazed.

SANYA
Wow.

DENZIL
I told him, “Yeah, I still paint and I still have all my paintings, and nothing’s happened.” So he said, “I’ll give you a show in my gallery. I’ll come and have a look.” I was in the process of moving from London to Cornwall. So, Peter and Matthew Higgs from White Columns in New York, they came down to Cornwall in 2016, I think it was June or July. They spent about three days with me in this house, and they went through forty years of work. The weather was quite good, so we could put paintings out in the garden, and they selected two exhibitions, one for Tramps, Peter’s gallery in London, and one for White Columns.

The exhibition at Peter’s gallery really went well. Nicholas Serota, the head of the arts in this country, was there. You could feel that things were beginning to happen, there were a lot of interesting people there. People were saying to me, “Oh, you’re the young boy on the scene now.” Young boy? I’m sixty.

SANYA
I think there’s something really important and beautiful about that, though. Who was it? I think Cy Twombly famously told Jenny Saville, to “try to be ignored for as long as possible.”

DENZIL
Yeah.

SANYA
One of the problems right now is the weight of the occasion. These careers start and people start working as if performing on a stage. They’re very focused on this moment of presentation and all of these exterior sources, these structures of validation, of presentation. They end up determining so much about a young artist’s work, how quickly it has to be made. But having this rich body of work and your own history, your own ecology, your own universe that you’ve built over this substantial amount of time, and then exposing it to people, it’s a totally different way of engaging an audience. They get to see something that has been developing on its own accord, at its own rhythm.

DENZIL
It takes me about six, seven weeks to make a painting. The best thing after art school is to be left alone for about ten—well, thirty years. You are consistent, you keep going. If it doesn’t happen, then it’s a bit sad, but that’s what happens to a lot of artists, let’s face it. I know a lot of them.

My lucky break was finding out what I wanted to paint. When I began art school,  I hadn’t found what I wanted to focus on. I did my BA at Central School of Art and Design, we used to go to Europe a lot—Holland, France. We saw all the Impressionists. I remember going to Kröller-Müller, this massive modern museum in the forest, and there were all the big names: Picasso, Matisse, van Gogh. I was in this huge forest with lots of mist and fog and surrounded by these incredible paintings. I thought to myself, “These people knew what they wanted to paint.”

Up until my second year, I was painting figures and landscapes. It was the year of the ghetto blaster sound system—everyone had the ghetto blaster. Everyone had parties, and I went to one in an old cinema, because in those days, cinemas were going out of fashion, and they were turning them into dance halls. They were full of Black Londoners. They were young, full of energy and vigor. I said, “Yes, this is what I want to paint. This is my backyard.” It was the best thing that ever happened to me. When I went to the Royal College, they wanted to know what you were going to do. You had to have a vision of what you were going to do for the next three years. I said, “I’m going to go to nightclubs and paint and draw.”

You had to have a year off before going to the Royal College, and that set me up beautifully. I just went to nightclubs and drew for a year. So, when I began working at the Royal College, I knew exactly what I wanted to paint. The first one was Jah Shaka. Then I did a second Jah Shaka which turned into The Burial of Winston Rose, my friend that had been killed by the police in 1981.

You must find something that you want to concentrate on. I think that helps a lot—it frees you. There is something in us, when we find something that means a lot to us, it leads to deeper levels so that we create from the outer and inner self. I think the thing for me was drawing at nightclubs. There were moments where you could feel this group of people as one. There was joy, sadness, energy and longing. These people realize their history and their position in life, through listening and moving to the sound. You could sense it. When you’re there drawing, it’s dark you can’t see what you’re doing, you can only see what they’re doing. You’re feeling it in within yourself and passing it through your tools (pastels, compressed charcoal).