Chasing the Light, Tracing the Tides of Ynys Mon
New paintings by
Nan Collantine & Sophie Nixon
Lowry Hotel, 50 Dearmans Place, Salford, Manchester, M3 5LH
Exhibition Dates: 05.09.24 - 15.10.24
A residency on borrowed time and space.
Artists Nan Collantine and Sophie Nixon have long been drawing together, at first a weekly life drawing group that Sophie organised in Sale, and then frequently meeting to draw urban landscapes around Manchester. They have also worked together on a project at Victoria Baths for a virtual exhibition in 2020.
The idea for the Anglesey residency was borne from the frustrations of being artist mothers, who are often overlooked by the existing art world structures, one being the artists’ residency, which is the idea that an artist takes off to a far off place, usually remote, for three months to a year to immerse themselves in their practice.
And so they designed their own residency, divided up into chunks of borrowed time and physical spaces. Starting with a trip to Anglesey for five days in January to draw in the landscape and talk to each other about their work. After which Nan and Sophie shared a studio space for a few weeks to experiment and develop ideas. There were also some follow-up trips to the island as they painted independently in their own studios.
Each artist has produced a body of work that is uniquely their own yet is about a shared experience, and if you look closely, you will see that there are some connections in certain paintings, clues and gestures that signal to each other’s work.
NAN COLLANTINE
Nan Collantine lives in Manchester and is a recent recipient of the Castlefield Gallery Award and finalist in the 2022 Beep Painting Prize. After completing an art foundation in 1990, Nan worked in advertising and communications for 25 years. From 2020-22 Nan completed two years mentorship with the Turps Banana Correspondence Course 2020-22 and she is a former student of an alternative art school, the Islington Mill Art Academy
It was whilst living in Australia from 2016-17 that Nan returned to her art practice and became immersed in Australian landscape painting, citing Nongirrna Marawili, Tony Tuckson, Brett Whiteley, Aida Tomescu and John Olsen as significant influences in her own work. More recently she has been looking at the aerial landscapes of Carol Rhodes and Richard Diebenkorn as well as looking to Joan Semmel and Georgia O’Keefe for its relationship to the body.
"Oil paint is my medium of choice for delivering that sense of bodily being, of push and pull, it yields to felt experience and it suits my subject, which is primarily about the sea. I use it as shorthand for the female condition, not only in terms of rhythms and cycles but as a symbol for repetitive acts of care. My attempts to draw the movement of the sea offer so many ways to start a painting and then having started, my concerns become embroiled in the process of making a painting.
For this project, I was interested in the idea of the island where time feels specific to the give and take of the tide. Because these paintings are about a specific place, my paintings have taken a new direction, and I have played around with perspective as well as abstraction and I have brought much more of the drawing into the paintings – the drawing itself is as much the subject as the sea itself." Nan Collantine
SOPHIE NIXON
Sophie Nixon is a Manchester based painter who graduated from the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne with a degree in Fine Art. Her work is influenced by light and dark, how light can change the mood of a landscape and in turn how dark can create a sense of mystery and foreboding. Whilst usually devoid of people, her landscapes explores the relationship between humans and nature and how each in turn shapes the other.
Visiting family in the Southwest and many breaks in Anglesey, Pembrokeshire and the Gower during the pandemic offered stunning coastal sunsets inspiring her most recent paintings for her 2022 exhibition, “Between the Dog and the Wolf” and her upcoming joint show. Views across industrial landscapes and end of the land coastal scenes lit by the sunsetting in huge skies provided source material for these new paintings. In many ways these are a return to and development of her earlier paintings of sulphuric lit car journeys and petrol stations from around 2009.
A huge advocate of the Arts she co-founded the Sale Arts Trail in 2014, a CIC established to provide professional paid opportunities for artists and makers based in the NW. She is a supporter of Forever Manchester, the Manchester communities charity producing work for their charitable auctions since 2014, Her work has been shown in solo and group shows across the UK and Europe. She is represented by Comme Ca Art.
The exhibition is open daily from 10:00 - 22:00 and is on the first floor of the Lowry Hotel.
PLEASE CONTACT COMME CA ART DEALERS FOR ANY ENQUIRIES.
CLAIRE TURNER | claire@commecaart.com | T: +44 (0) 161 273 5495
CCA GALLERY 5TH FLOOR | HOPE MILL | POLLARD STREET | ANCOATS | MANCHESTER | M4 7JA
