Nicola Wood: Artist Statement

The earliest memory I have of my art is a desire to create. The first time I used a pencil to draw a line I knew I could create things by drawing them.  I copied dresses from fashion magazines.  I drew animals and buildings.  I was fascinated by what I was creating.  That sense continued throughout my life as an artist.  If I had a work in progress, I awoke in the morning and rushed to look at what I had painted the previous day.

As an artist, through my creations, I am sharing how I see the world.  My art shows my emotional reaction to what attracts me.  I often use the phrase, “Life is what you notice,” because that describes how I view myself through my art.  My art is me.  I am not trying to influence a viewer or send a message.  I have had people look at my art and say, things like, “Perhaps you painted it that way because . . . ,” and when I thought about what they said, I might realize they were right, but the thought had never occurred to me as I was creating the art.  There is nothing intentional about my art; if there is a message, it is subconscious.

In my first year at the Royal College, the book Art Since 1945 was published.  It introduced me to abstract expressionism.  Abstraction gave me a new source for creativity.  I was not limited to colors and shapes of pre-existing objects.  I was free and inspired to express my reactions simply to colors and shapes I noticed.

Abstract expressionism was not an intellectual process of creation for me.  I did not visualize a painting in my mind then recreate it with paint on paper.  I first sought out a color that appealed to me.  I often relied on happen stance.  Bark on a tree might inspire me to create a design of similar color and shape.  One method, which I related to Ashly Gray, employed a dead bee I found lying on a window sill.  I viewed its body under a magnifying glass and saw a sea of colors and array of shapes.  I mixed a color to match one of those I observed on the bee.  I applied that color to paper in a shape I had seen on the bee.  That initial combination of color and shape inspired my next combination of color and shape.  That pattern was repeated stair step fashion, with each new combination expressing my reaction to the emerging design.

When I am creating, the artwork becomes a partner who compels a certain brush stroke or color choice or pattern.  I do not know want to expect. The world of the painting is an unknown.  I want to explore.  It draws me in.  I feel I am mixing myself into the  painting along with the paint.

Gratitude for my education and training has been a cornerstone of my life as an artist.  From the age of fifteen I was enrolled in British art schools; first in the Southport School of Arts and Crafts, then Manchester Regional School of Art, and then the Royal College of Art.  I also spent a year at the Parsons School of Design in New York as a Fulbright Scholar.  Some of my textile designs, when first seen, are thought to be prints, not originals.  Without close inspection, some of my oil paintings are mistaken as prints of photographs.  When asked how I could create such designs by hand, I answer, “That is what we were trained to do.”  I make my response plural because my classmates and I were trained in a classical manner.  Life drawing with models nude and in costume was in my earliest curriculum.  In Manchester one of our models was a horse.  Proportion was studied rigorously, and David Hockney is a master of proportion.  Regardless of our specialties, we were capable of changing and adapting to new styles and genres.  My friend Zandra Rhodes was trained in textile design but switched to fashion. I was trained in textile design and when I decided to switch to oil painting I was confident I could make the change.  British art of the postwar era is a testament to its art schools.

Confidence provides the impetus to change and meet challenges.  In that regard, my education has been essential to my life as an artist.  Shortly after I began to paint in oils, I lost sight in one eye.  I knew I could continue my life as an artist because of my training, and I did.

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