WARWICK SAINT
Mixed Media Artist - Painter - Photographer
Warwick Saint (1972) is a painter, photographer, and mixed media artist from South Africa, recognized globally for his mastery and control of light.
Saint reimagined the role of lighting in film shoots by adapting techniques from scientific applications of flash and stroboscopic photography and by combining artificial and natural light for kinetic exposures. His most innovative photographic process is the Kinetic Silhouette (2000), which he designed to capture athletes in motion. Additional Saint-tailored techniques include Focused Stroboscopic, SDF HMI MIX, OFTE, Sonic Speed, and Light Painting. His precision for capturing form and movement defied the use of editing software.
Brands such as Nike, Puma, and Diesel have all published global campaigns with unaltered images created by Saint. He has shot album covers for icons such as Lady Gaga, Alicia Keys, Missy Elliot, JLo, and Whitney Houston and campaigns with Gal Gadot, Kim Kardashian, Serena Williams, LeBron James, and countless others.
Saint on Set
Awards
Hollywood Beauty Awards 2019
Hasselblad Masters Award
Press
Podcasts
Covers
Growing up with a creative director father and a fashion model mother, Saint's fascination with art and photography was nurtured from a young age. Observing his mother’s struggle to conform to unattainable beauty standards perpetuated by the fashion industry, Saint’s innate understanding of self-perception has been present throughout his career, informing how he photographs models, actors, musicians, and athletes.
In 2018, Saint moved beyond traditional photography and began exploring his work through painting; an inquiry into beauty, identity, celebrity, and the resulting psychological complexities of self-perception in our time.
Saint's new creative process, which he calls "Lumadynamic Decomposition", is the result of challenging his own photography. An interplay of light and color imbues the photographs with a heightened sense of painterly realism. A composite of multiple shots, printed on linen mesh creates the “lumascape” which becomes the foundation for his mixed media work. He then destructs the lumascape with paint, a process in which emergent content reveals itself. Saint mixes his pallet directly on the surface of the lumascape. This approach allows Saint to integrate the two mediums of photography and paint with immediacy. Saint’s Lumadynamic Decomposition uniquely uses light to convey the effect of paint, rather than the traditional approach of using paint to capture light, creating a reversal in the sense that he moves from photorealism towards abstraction.
His new series, A Legacy Of Light, is the artistic progression stemming from a photographic career that shaped much of the visual landscape of millennial culture.
Saint lives and works between Miami, Montana, and Los Angeles.