PHILIP NICOL: RECENT PAINTINGS

24 October - 30 November

Based in Cardiff, Philip Nicol won the Gold Medal in Fine Art at the National Eisteddfod in 2002. This exhibition is a selection of works originally shown at Newport Museum and Art Gallery in January 2005.

Nicol makes luminous paintings of urban spaces in which the ordinary and the commonplace is transformed into the extraordinary. Somewhat dreamlike and metaphysical in character, these works present a very particular ‘take’ on the world we inhabit and feel we know.

The paintings are about city life yet many of them completely dispense with the human figure, as they are interested less in the particular stories of individuals, than in the form of collective life that the city enforces through the spaces it makes available. In many cases cars act as substitute figures, because they are mobile objects that the city has to accommodate, just as it has to accommodate people.

The paintings resist narration, giving few clues as to the lead up or consequence of the events shown, and little information as to events taking place outside the picture frame, thereby isolating commonplace events in a minimal and enigmatic way.

Narrative time, in which time is experienced as a continuation is contrasted with ‘photographic’ time, the isolated and static moment. Photographic features, such as the edge of the canvas cutting through objects, blurring of foreground features and the sense of a passing glance, are evident in the paintings, which remind us that these are photographic conventions.

Shadow and light, often in the form of illumination, are used to set a stage slightly removed from the viewer. Shadow and light is also used to draw us in to the picture, and create a sense of movement even when the scenes depicted are static. The light in the paintings is often from several sources, casting shadow in several directions, which is reminiscent of lighting at a theatre and strengthens the viewer’s sense that there is something being enacted in the paintings, even when they seem to resist narration. The shadows and light casted also contribute to a sense of anticipation or expectancy, sometimes bordering on a feeling of unease, but sometimes inviting and uplifting.

Many of the paintings have a pastoral quality to them, and a slowness and quietness that one would think is at odds with the urban environment. But this feature of Philip Nicol’s paintings suggests that within the urban environment, the pastoral survives as a state of mind that transforms elements such as a clutch of trees into emblems of a different kind of life, dreamt up by city dwellers to escape the reality of their surroundings.

The paintings are about the psychological effects of urban life as much as they are about architecture or locale

Gallery Opening Times
10am - 8 pm Monday - Sunday

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Oriel Mwldan Patron Mary Lloyd Jones