NICHOLAS WOOD

Nicholas Wood was born a Dover Shark and a Man of Kent in 1966 in the shadow of the famous White Cliffs. A childhood spent on shingle beaches, on the sea, on trains and in stations opened his eyes to both nature and human endeavour and provided an inexhaustible grounding for his vocation.

He gained a degree in French and ancient history at the University of Leicester before studying illustration and the graphic novel at the Institut Saint Luc in Brussels where he lived for ten years.

A founder member of the strip cartoon cooperative « La Cinquième Couche », Nicholas was an active participant through the nineties in the development and dissemination of a new independent approach to the graphic novel through a series of events and exhibitions in Belgium and an eponymous periodical. This background in the graphic novel remains evident in the composition of his images and an irrepressible inclination to tell stories, albeit often stories without a plot, merely short sequences that might simply recount a walk, a moment in time, the material presence of light, the sound of silence.

Nicholas works primarily in collage, initially dying, colouring and over-printing an array of different papers to constitute a library of colours, textures and patterns. This assorted body of paper then serves as a palette for quite literally building up images, tearing cutting and pasting sheets and hundreds of sometimes infinitely small fragments of paper. Specific features are enhanced in pencil. The process is slow and brooks no short-cuts but delivers a unique result of great depth and presence.

Through both portraiture and landscape, his central theme is the passing of time, be it the span of lifetimes or fleeting moments. Often presented in series, this exploration might be manifested though portraits giving a new lease of life to tribesmen encountered during an ethnographic expedition to the Congo a hundred years ago, or fifty images narrating the tide’s endless ebb and flow on the beach at home.

Work in progress includes a graphic novel for children set in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

It’s illustration, cartoon strips, unhurried snapshots. Torn, cut and scratched away, it’s collage. An assembly of paper and glue, pigments and ink. There are colours and patterns, textures and lines drawn in black pencil and white chalk. It tells us about getting from A to B and about idle ramblings, catching fleeting instants, narrating the passing of time.

My work is a reflection of myself, caught somewhere in the past, forever a boy in love with paper, pencils and pigments, their smell and material presence, with the manipulation of these simple but time-honoured tools to put across a vision of the world. From a few torn sheets that give the first “brushstrokes” to the infinitely small fragments that pick out minute details my images are painstakingly built up in layers, the final picture slowly emerging like a photograph in developing fluid. There is joy in the very process and a passion in striving to convey beauty.

Artiste européen installé à Angers depuis 2003, je suis né en Grande Bretagne en 1966. J’ai étudié l’illustration et la bande dessinée à l’Institut Saint Luc de Bruxelles où j’ai vécu dix ans.

Membre fondateur du collectif « La Cinquième Couche », j’ai participé dans les années 90 à l’effervescence d’une nouvelle bande dessinée indépendante en Belgique au travers de diverses manifestations et expositions collectives ainsi que la revue périodique La Cinquième Couche.

J’explore au travers d’un médium fixe le mouvement, les parcours et le passage du temps. Par l’influence de la bande dessinée j’interroge les vecteurs de narration dans l’image et les séquences. La bande dessinée permet une lecture particulière, une narration sur plusieurs niveaux, de multiples facettes dans le maniement du récit.

Grand amoureux du papier, mes oeuvres sont essentiellement en collage. Un premier travail sur le papier même avec peinture, encre et pigments en tous genres me permet de constituer une bibliothèque de divers types de papiers teints ou colorés, imprimés de textures et de motifs. Ces papiers constituent ensuite une palette pour la construction d’images. Quelques feuilles de fond qui donnent le ton et les grands contours, et ensuite des dizaines voire des centaines de fragments jusqu’à l’infiniment petit pour suggérer l’espace et le volume, pour donner toute sa profondeur à l’image. Parfois un dessin au crayon vient souligner quelques détails. Il s’agit d’un travail méticuleux où le temps prend toute son ampleur.

De ce jeu de superposition et de juxtaposition de couleurs et de formes naît un univers de matières où l’image prend vie.

 

Expositions/Exhibitions

2019               Salon National des Beaux Arts - Médaille d'Or Jury Invite, section Illustration - Prix Géant des Beaux-Arts

2018               Le Hall Saumur

2018               The Other Art Fair London

2016               Festival de la BD engagée May-sur-Evre

2016               Invité d'honneur Salon de Printemps Trélazé

2015               Showroom Dynasties Chine Angers

2015               Trélazé. “Guerre et Paix” Exposition collective des Ateliers d’Artistes d’Angers

2014               Salon 49 regards
                       Salon de Printemps Trélazé – 1er Prix peinture

2013               Biennal de l’aquarelle à Brioude – Œuvres sur papier
                       Salon 49 regards

2012               Abbaye de la Ronceray Angers. “Art d’ici” L’apocalypse perdue

2011               Galerie AVV St Mathurin sur Loire

2009              Galerie des Lices Angers

1999               Galerie Carpe Diem Dion-Valmont Belgique