Samuel Bassett 'The Great Squall'

S A M U E L B A S S E T T T H E G R E A T S Q U A L L

My soul has been torn from me and I am bleeding 

My hear t it has been rent and I am cr ying 

All the beauty around me fades and I am screaming 

I am the last of the great whales and I am dying 

Last night I heard the cr y of my last companion 

The roar of the harpoon gun and then I was alone 

I thought of the days gone by when we were thousands 

But I know that I soon must die the last leviathan 

This morning the sun did rise crimson in the nor th sky 

The ice was the colour of blood and the winds they did sigh 

I rose for to take a breath it was my last one 

From a gun came the roar of death and now I am done 

Oh now that we are all gone there’s no more hunting 

The big fellow is no more it’s no use lamenting 

What race will be next in line? All for the slaughter 

The elephant or the seal or your sons and daughters 

My soul has been torn from me and I am bleeding 

My hear t it has been rent and I am cr ying 

All the beauty around me fades and I am screaming 

I am the last of the great whales and I am dying

The first time I met Samuel Bassett was at Tremenheere, 

a sculpture garden in his native Cornwall. I liked him 

straight away. Most ar tists tend to be a bit buttoned 

up, but Sam was easy to talk to. With his broad grin 

and his boyish good looks, he could have been the 

lead singer in a garage band. The next day, I went to 

see him in St Ives, a few miles from Tremenheere. “I 

really hope I like his ar t,” I thought, as he led me into 

his studio. There’s nothing worse than liking someone, 

then finding you can’t stand their work. 

The small room was full of paintings. Big canvases, six 

feet across, stacked in piles against the walls. Sam dug 

out a few out to show me. I was amazed. This was like 

nothing I’d ever seen before, yet I recognised it straight 

away. You know how the best music sounds unique, yet 

strangely familiar? Well, it’s the same with painting. A 

true ar tist creates his own world - but once you step 

inside it, it feels as familiar as your own. 

The people in Samuel Bassett’s paintings are precise 

and delicate, etched with draughtsman-like finesse. 

The forces that surround them are enormous, brutal, 

elemental. His characters are submerged in vast dark 

seas, battered by savage storms. He attacks the canvas 

with angr y splashes of vivid colour. The fragile figures 

in his paintings often look a lot like him. 

It usually takes an ar tist a lifetime to find their own 

voice. Sam has found his already, and that’s what 

gives these pictures their raw power. He speaks from 

the hear t, about the things that move and trouble 

him. He paints the language of dreams and memor y. 

His paintings describe his hopes and fears. There 

are echoes of others ar tists in his work (Bacon, 

Baselitz, Schiele…) but these fleeting similarities are 

coincidental. His work is utterly his own. His ar tistic 

training has given him a master y of paint and an eye for 

detail, but he hasn’t been stifled by ar t histor y. There’s 

nothing self-conscious about his work, no attempt to 

be like or unlike other ar tists. It’s autobiographical, 

expressionistic. It’s about the way he feels about 

the world. 

I met Sam again in London, a few months later, at the 

Saatchi Galler y, where he was showing a selection of 

his work. Talking to him again, I realised I’d slightly 

misjudged him. I realised his happy-go-lucky attitude 

was only par t of who he was. It wasn’t the whole 

stor y, of course it wasn’t - the paintings told you that. 

They had that sense of human suffering which all great 

ar tists share. Looking at these paintings made me see 

him in a different light. There was some sadness behind 

that broad grin, some suffering behind that breezy 

manner. You could hear it in his laughter. You could see 

it in his eyes. 

He was man enough to admit that life’s experiences 

often overwhelm him. A lesser ar tist shirks crisis. Sam 

confronts it in his painting. He paints the good times 

and the bad times. Whatever happens in his life, it 

happens on the canvas, too. Painting is his secret diar y, 

his confessional, his raison d’etre. ‘For me, making ar t 

is a need and a must,’ he says. Look at the paintings. 

It’s all there. 

Samuel Bassett was born in St Ives, in Cornwall, in 

1982. If you already know Cornwall, you can skip this 

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it – but in case you don’t, you need to know that 

Cornwall is a place apar t, as different from England 

as Wales or Scotland, and that St Ives is one of the 

most historic and atmospheric towns in this wild and 

lovely land. A long, narrow peninsular, jutting out into 

the Atlantic, Cornwall feels separate from the rest 

of Britain, and Penwith, where Sam grew up, feels 

separate from the rest of Cornwall. A few miles from 

Land’s End, surrounded on three sides by open water, 

it’s like an island. London is a day’s drive away. With 

the rest of England so remote and distant, its people 

have always looked beyond Britain, out towards the 

wider world. 

Ar tistically, St Ives is unlike anywhere else in Britain. 

Perched on the edge of England, you’d think it’d be a 

sleepy backwater, but for a centur y this little seaside 

town has been at the cutting edge of modern ar t. 

In 1920, the great British ceramicist Bernard Leach 

established his own potter y here, and in 1939 Barbara 

Hepwor th and Ben Nicholson came here to escape 

the Blitz. They were joined by some of the best British 

ar tists of their age: Terr y Frost, Patrick Heron, Roger 

Hilton... Francis Bacon came here too (he actually 

painted in Sam’s old studio). Even Mark Rothko 

dropped in. Sam is now par t of this grand tradition, but 

with one impor tant difference. Most of those famous 

ar tists were outsiders, Londoners looking for a great 

escape. Sam’s Cornish roots go a lot deeper. His father 

comes from St Ives, his mother comes from Newlyn, 

and his family have been in Penwith for at least 300 

years. His father was a fisherman, sailing all the way 

to Ireland and the Bay of Biscay. He was a miner too, 

before Cornwall’s ancient tin mines closed. For Sam, 

Penwith isn’t just a pretty place to paint - it’s par t of 

who his is. He loves the wildness of the sea, especially 

in winter. ‘The sea’s ver y black - it’s almost like oil,’ he 

says, as he talks me through one of his latest paintings. 

Most ar tists come to paint Penwith in summer time, 

and depar t when the weather turns. This is what the 

sea really looks like on winter’s day, as darkness falls, 

after the holidaymakers have all gone. 

Sam isn’t the sor t of ar tist who stands in front 

of a canvas for hours on end. He works in shor t 

concentrated bursts, focusing all his energy into 

intensive sessions. This emotional intensity is reflected 

in his ar t. “I’ve been married, I’ve had a child, I’ve been 

divorced - I’ve had no money, I’ve had good money...” 

But whatever else is going on, his ar t is always there. 

“I’ve had a good year,” he says. “I’m excited about 

the next steps within my painting.” He never knows 

where it will lead him. It’s a journey into the unknown, 

a voyage of discover y. Who knows where will it take 

him next? 

William Cook, 2017 

William Cook is a writer and ar ts journalist for 

The BBC, The Spectator, The Independent, Christies 

Magazine, The New Statesman, The Guardian and 

Apollo Magazine. 

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The Great Squall 

acr ylic & ink on canvas . 320 x 210 cm 

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You Need To Sharpen Your Elbows 

acr ylic & ink on panel . 122 x 183 cm 

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Last Night I Heard The Cr y Of My Last Companion 


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I Lay Here In The Shadow Of Your Fallen Head 


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I Took His Eyes Out And Blinded Myself 


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Please Dont Touch Me (Kintsugi) 

acr ylic & ink on per spex . 30 x 20 cm 

We Have Been Used (Kintsugi) 


Ready Or Not Here I Cum (Kintsugi) 


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Yeah, They Fucked It, Your’e Dead (Kintsugi) 


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The Future Has Lost Karensa (Kintsugi) 


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We Are Ill HaHaHaHa (Kintsugi) 


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We Need A Little Self Control 


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Your Beauty Doesn’t Just Exist In My Eyes 


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Gonna Wind You Up And See If You Walk Alone 


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Hero (By Dawn The Anxiety Became Clear) 


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And The Lord Lay Cold 


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Head In Your Boat 


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Loss 


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Goliath 

acr ylic & ink on per spex, expanding foam . 50 x 45 x 50 cm 

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Nipples and Gossip 

acr ylic & ink on canvas & panel . 222 x 212 cm 

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Yesterday We Ate Hake Tomorrow We’ll Burn Our Boat 


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Silenced by Fake News 


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Alone 

ceramic . 3.5 x 13 x 4 cm 

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Be Sure to Fail An Make It Fucking Massive 


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Fish Aren’t As Big As They Used To Be 


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Slight Squall Over Briton 


Dawn Boat Under Cold Cock 

acr ylic & ink on panel . 37 x 27 cm

Alone With You And Me 


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Chubby Little Winner 


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This Is Your Fault 


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1 . Lost Heads On Pink . 26 x 27 cm 

2 . Lost Heads On Sea . 22 x 25 cm 

3 . Lost Head On Pink . 20 x 26 cm 

4 . Lost Heads On Sea At Dawn . 30 x 30 cm 

5 . Save Soul . 17 x 32 cm 

6 . Together On The Horizon . 36 x 19 cm 

7 . Potting Together . 26 x 18 cm 

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all acr ylic & ink on panel 

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Sad Skies Out West 


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Getting Damp Over Lost Lands (Zennor) 


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Fraggle’s Last Day 


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He Continued To Wade For His Lost Child 


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I Loved U Hakey Bay 


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Burnt To Shit 


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Old Father s 

acr ylic & ink on panel . 19 x 12 cm each 

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Published by Anima-Mundi to coincide with the exhibition ‘The Great Squall’ by Samuel Bassett 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or 

by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers 

Photography by Lauren Bowley 

‘The Last Leviathan’ by Andy Barnes 

Street-an-Pol . St. Ives . Cornwall . Tel: 01736 793121 . Email: mail@anima-mundi.co.uk . www.anima-mundi.co.uk

Samuel Bassett 'The Great Squall'

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