Music and dance have inspired the work of Grenada-born British artist Denzil Forrester since the late 1970s. In
Altar, a print commissioned for the Government Art Collection, Forrester captures a scene from the 2023 Falmouth Reggae Festival in Cornwall, where the artist now lives and works. As a young man in East London, he was struck by the freedom of expression in the reggae and dub nightclubs of Hackney, a marked contrast to the daily lives of the Afro-Caribbean community in London at that time. He experienced the sounds and pressed bodies of the clubs as ‘a continuation of city life with some spiritual fulfilment’. Returning with A1 paper and charcoal, Forrester created drawings on the spot to the length of a record, working in the dark: ‘You have to give yourself over to that energy, that’s all it is.' In the subsequent paintings, the nightclub lights and sounds become the lines and forms that frame the raw energy of the dancers.
Forrester describes his childhood, surrounded by the natural beauty of Grenada, as helping him to appreciate colour. Now, he sees the ‘brilliant light’ of Cornwall infiltrating his work: ‘It’s like painting in Italy.' While the figures in his work are crowded together, the spaces in between, in the artist’s words, ‘echo the music of the blues clubs, but are also reminiscent of the light that breaks through a forest, or the light that reflects from a nightclub’s mirrored ball. So sound, nature and the city are linked’.
