SAM HEWITT

My subject has always been the conscious and unconscious interrelationships of urban humans in the public environment, lit by the sun so as to project their shadows across the painting like a subtext. In 2020 this subject vanished and the subsequent social reorganisation left me unable to paint anything beautiful for the last three years.

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I have witnessed the accelerated digitisation of human relations during the last five years without a smartphone or social, contemporary entertainment or news media of any kind. This gives me a clear view of what has happened to society without the compensations and possibilities provided by the dazzling functionality of the internet.

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I have  just completed a book on the subject, and through that  process of analysing the situation methodically, I have finally unlocked my ability to paint the people around me again.

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In my research for the book, I discovered that L S Lowry (whose favourite tutor at Manchester - Adolfe Valette - also taught my life-drawing teacher Sam Rabin) had instinctively rejected the novel media of his day in order to clearly apprehend and paint the industrially traumatised and discarded society around him.

 

"My three most cherished records are the fact that I've never been abroad, never had a telephone and never owned a motorcar."

- L S Lowry

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This further connection has confirmed my own sense of location in art history and inspired a willing return to Brighton. I find myself driven to doggedly seek-out and represent what is still beautiful about people and their shadows in cities.