Nick is a full-time artist and writer working in London, England. His background is in Modern Literature and he has lectured at many noteworthy universities. Nick has a degree in Fine Art from the University of Hertfordshire and an MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins. He also teaches painting at his London studio (www.londonartclasses.com). Nick has exhibited extensively both in London and internationally and his work is represented in a number of collections, including British Council Greece, BUPA, GlaxoSmithKline and One Aldwych.
W&N: Describe your work & style
NM: I am a painter and a writer and both of these art forms constantly cross reference each other in my work. My paintings draw on material from both earlier and recent writing, incorporating this into visual constructions which in turn feed new developments in the writing.
You can view Nick's gallery here.
W&N: What techniques do you apply?
NM: I tend to start off a painting with a basic structure underneath and then I let the paint fall on it from above (in a very liquid form), flooding it in different ways. I move and manipulate the canvas itself so it almost ends up a like a 3 dimensional map. Then when that dries I move in and intervene so there’s a juxtaposition of willed and unwilled areas of paint. What’s particularly important in my work is the constant interaction between the unexpected and my own intent.
W&N: Why do you use acrylics?
NM: They have extreme flexibility. The fact that they dry quickly suits my temperament. They offer all sorts of possibilities for technical experimentation and work well with my technique, also enabling me to blend in written elements with the paint.
W&N: What artists do you find inspiring?
NM: I really admire Anselm Kiefer, he’s one of the major artists of the 20th century for me because he combines real ambition and vision with great technical understanding and mastery. There’s a high conceptual element to his work but the works have very powerful visual dynamics. You can return again and again to his work and re-perceive them in different ways.
W&N: What are your first impressions of Artists’ Acrylic?
NM: I like Artists’ Acrylics because they have a high saturation and pigment load which means you can rely on the colour retaining its brilliance and strength, even when it is diluted significantly.
This means that they lend themselves to high experimentation – I can achieve effects that I can’t create as easily with other paints. The more pigmented a colour is, the more able you are to push it to its limits and in my case as an acrylic artist, I’m interested in seeing to what extent I can take the paint to new levels of physical variation.
The brilliance and strength of colour means that I can also achieve greater subtleties and levels of depth in my paintings that I wasn’t able to achieve as easily before.
