The Great Squall
My soul has been torn from me and I am bleeding
My heart it has been rent and I am crying
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 cry 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 north 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 heart it has been rent and I am crying
All the beauty around me fades and I am screaming
I am the last of the great whales and I am dying
'The Last Leviathan' by Andy Barnes
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 angry splashes of vivid colour. The fragile figures in his paintings often look a lot like him.
It usually takes an artist 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 heart, about the things that move and trouble him. He paints the language of dreams and memory. His paintings describe his hopes and fears. There are echoes of others artists in his work (Bacon, Baselitz, Schiele…) but these fleeting similarities are coincidental. His work is utterly his own. His artistic training has given him a mastery of paint and an eye for detail, but he hasn’t been stifled by art history. There’s nothing self-conscious about his work, no attempt to be like or unlike other artists. It’s autobiographical, expressionistic. It’s about the way he feels about the world.