Nigel is a visual artist working in North Wales in the UK making paintings and prints. His work evolves from the perception of abstraction, symmetry, system, and organisation, while working with these parameters it is a continual challenge to break away from these configurations. The practice and process of making visual art is for Nigel an immersive act prompting questions, conclusions, and development generating more analysis of the same it’s an organic cycle of progression. Working in this way the product is never static, a question or idea is posed, and the practice engages this and work comes out of that equation. This means the practice works with a basic range of “tools” but the formula changes resulting in variables of the art made. In recent years the work has returned to the proposition of mark making and his own interpretation of this fundamental act. For Nigel the primary source of the mark is line, using the “tools” perceived in the practice a re-examination of the nucleus of making art is taking place.
We are all influenced by personal experiences and for the past 6 years Nigel’s role as facilitator at Regional Print moved the practice toward printmaking, the experience of teaching printmaking allowed for experimentation with many techniques, the work currently is dictated by the relief technique and an examination of the print as a framed artifact. 2022 sees a re-emergence of painting, particularly using watercolours something not used for over 15 years, these works are clearly exploring the qualities of the media not attainable using print.
During the covid lockdowns Nigel continued to make work, the nature of his method of working can be self-indulgent but research plays an influential part of the practice, using online resources like YouTube, Vimeo and Instagram resulted in the Regional Print Centres own YouTube channel, studying videos on filming and editing as well as other printmakers channels resulted in a fresh examination of the creative process.
