About me
Call me NEMO
I am an Englishman living in southern Spain. A child of the 80s from Essex, to the east of London in the UK. Spent my youth at parties or demos in London. Everything from ‘Free Nelson Mandela’, through ‘Rock Against Racism’, to ‘Pride’. Drove a VW Beetle and partied on the beach during Live Aid.
I was given a privileged education. Went to art school where I studied sculpture and the first decade of my employment was spent in early digital graphic design.
Now, I work as an English teacher but during the pandemic decided to redirect my efforts back towards what I always wanted to do, to live in, by and through art.
I decided to develop my charcoal drawing and make a silk screen printing studio in my garage. Designed and hand-built my wash-out booth, exposure box, light proof box, screen drying rack and print table. Then, in August, at 45 degrees C. started to get some printing done.
Here, on this website, you can see my development and progress. This is the beginning of the rest of my life.
About My Work
I have never thought that my work belonged in a gallery. I make things for people to have in their homes and around them as they work. In this age of mass-production, mass-distribution, mass-markets and global availability, tailored to the widest possible public, my work reaches out to the individual.
It is one of a kind, handmade. It is singular, the idea, the feeling the object. Each artwork is a line of thought. The ‘fossil’ left behind by the shape of an idea. It is a searching process. I make the theme my own and execute the work in my own way. That is the way in which I can produce such a personal reaction.
Printmaking is a process that nowadays involves technological ability, manual skill and artistic endeavor.
I designed and made the machines that I use to print. They are not perfect; they are part of a process that is constantly evolving. I love it!
Many of the prints dirive directly from my line drawings.
Drawing in Charcoal or Ink
I draw with charcoal and ink because it is challenging. I am not a slick, repetitive artist who has found something that sells and now dedicates his time to repeating that ‘something’ ad nauseum. I want to develop and change. My art is typically figurative because I look for the rhythms and echoes that resonate within us from the bodies form. I should add that I often use water as a theme, for the same reasons.
Recently, I have been using some print software to map my line drawing over the reference as a way of checking accuracy.
Along the way I have begun to experiment with the quality of line that is beginning to express some 'drawn' characteristics and some 'written' ones.
The net result is beginning to look like a future print that may end up in two colours.
As I began to experiment with colours, it began to look like a neon sign.
As I arrived at this image it reminded me of Zibby, a good friend of mine who is gay, so I gave it a PRIDE title in his honour.
So, at this point I begin to think that this looks like some graphic design from the 1980's and the whole thing goes back into the washing machine that is my brain.
And so one thing is leading to another.
Carving Wood
I carve wood because it is for me the best balance between mind and hands. The wood offers enough resistance to give my mind time to consider every movement.
All art is both surface and substance. The one seduces the senses and the other engages the mind. This is my aim.
My artwork is not about exhibiting clever techniques or showing how much skill can be inflicted upon one piece of work.
I work within the philosophy of 'Truth to Materials'. I do not try to recreate nature, that would be a fool's errand. It is about getting the image that is in my head out and in to the real world. It is about exploring a line of enquiry. A journey that may pass from piece to piece.
The object that is produced is, in a way, a by-product of this search. Once complete it can serve me in only one more way. To finance the next step on the journey. The next object.
A Philosophy of Narrative Threads
‘….but there is this one glorious, timeless moment, not of ‘being but rather of ‘becoming’ that happens while these threads are together’
Each object has its own story and each object is, in any moment, in a step or phase, in a longer journey.
Before the materials reach my hands, they have existed in the world and have their own history. They have been other things. The materials are influenced by me during a short time. I also have my story. My past, leading up to this moment, my ‘thread’. The idea that I am thinking about may also have passed through the heads of other people, on its way through history. And we, the materials, the idea and I, have a brief 'entanglement'. The story of the carving, the drawing and the printmaking, a chapter within a longer narrative for each of us.
When the work leaves me and becomes part of the lives of its new owners it writes a new chapter in its story. My part is over and the owner's story has begun. So, in this way the tree, the wood, the charcoal, the paper ties many stories thread themselves together and being art can whisper those stories through time. But there is this one glorious, timeless moment, not of ‘being but rather of ‘becoming’ that happens while these threads are together in the making process.
It is a new drawing, but first it was charcoal, and before that a willow tree and we are all part of the narrative that it is being written.
There is always a hint of organisation heading toward entropy in my work. As David Byrne said,
'We're on a road to nowhere, Come on inside! That is the invitation I make.
There are works of art in the world that are already some thousands of years old and they carry the signs of their passage through the centuries written upon them but in the end, it is all stardust.