Inward Sky: Sam Hewitt's beautiful paintings of people play with light and shadow

"The show title refers to the paintings of graded colour upon which thoughts manifest in the form of ordinary people and their various motives, assumed through movement and body language," explains Sam. "Together they describe my internal experience around whatever issue is the title of each painting."

Sam’s work connects itself for two specific reasons. Firstly, he only uses four colours – cadmium red, cadmium yellow, monestial blue and opaque white – so there’s always a strong visual relationship between any two of his paintings. Secondly, each painting is, in part, a manifestation of the artist’s unconscious. This element creates profound connections between the works in parallel with the artist’s emotions and life experiences.

Heavily influencing this body of work is Sam’s recent trip to Marrakech. As with his earlier works, Sam’s process is informed by his photographs of people in their respective urban environments. The experience led to him incorporating warmer colours in comparison to previous works, and with more information about the people pictured. "I often paint over old works and the glimpses of previous layers create the exciting sense of another level of experience to the moment represented," he adds. "Inward Sky was informed by photographs taken in Morocco in January and take a different approach altogether. The first marks are definitive and need to be made with great care."

Inward Sky will run from 28 April until 13 May at Dynamite Gallery, 13 Trafalgar Street, Brighton BN1 4EQ. Discover more at www.dynamitegallery.com.