Art Appreciation
Christian Quin Newell was born in 1991 in Latisana, Friuli‑Venezia Giulia, Italy, to a Roman Catholic mother and a Jamaican-Italian father. He spent his formative years alternating between rural northern Italy and South East London—specifically Peckham in the 1990s.
He’s described this upbringing as a study in contrast: “I really got an early glimpse into the extreme differences in life and lifestyle,” which shaped his sense of cultural identity and adaptability. At 18, inspired by Magritte, Dalí, and Surrealists, he chose painting as a profession, eventually earning a BA in Illustration from Camberwell College of Art in London.
Newell works primarily on small-scale paper pieces, typically around 8 inches, using high-pigment Japanese paint applied with squirrel-hair brushes, often on primed hemp paper. He deliberately avoids larger canvases and toxic media, favoring immediacy and a spiritual connection to his materials .
Newell adapts a muted palette—earth tones, sea greens, siennas—with occasional deep reds to convey subtle emotional states. His compositions echo early 20th-century metaphysical painting, featuring hybrid figures, floating objects, and dreamlike architecture, all rendered with striking intimacy.
In his Juxtapoz interview about The Way (Public Gallery, London, summer 2024), Newell detailed how lucid dreaming guides his practice. He records dreams in a diary, entraining his mind through meditation and Buddhist mindfulness so that he can recognize and manipulate dream content—akin to “receiving letters from an inner dreamer."
He likens lucid dreaming’s mental rehearsal effects to improved sports performance, strengthening neural pathways. Additionally, he uses non-dominant hand drawing and automatic techniques to bypass his ego, embracing subconscious impulses much like the Surrealists . These methods, along with his devotion to meditation and dreamwork, make his art a deeply introspective practice bridging mysticism, psychology, and visual poetry.
Sources:
https://www.instagram.com/cee_quin
https://www.juxtapoz.com/news/magazine/features/christian-quin-newell-a-dream-sequence
https://www.christiannewell.com/general-5
https://artviewer.org/christian-quin-newell-at-public-gallery
https://www.vsf.la/exhibitions/109-christian-quin-newell-siena/overview/
https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Christian-Quin-Newell/BF9F4910E32AECCA/Biography
https://www.sargentsdaughters.com/touchstones
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