Nick Eggleston: Watercolourist
“The real allure in watercolour for me is the magical alchemy involved and it's as much about the enjoyment of the actual painting process than producing a finished work,” says Nick.
'Mean Streets'
Watercolour 270mm x 400mm 2010 Private Collection.
Nick's painting 'Mean Streets' was one of the stand-out paintings in the Double Vision exhibition at the Creative Tauranga Community Gallery last year. The attention grabbing use of colour, use of pictorial space and its serious message makes it one of the best paintings I saw in 2010.
“Watercolour painting cannot be fully mastered,” says Nick, “For to master a thing you would have to control it completely-that would squeeze the life out of it.
“I love the changes that occur during the picture making as you guide the application of colour while not completely controlling it.
“The pigments carried by water flow into each other and one colour can become another colour right before your eyes.”
'Gulls Over Mauao' 750mm x 350mm watercolour 2010.
In many of his paintings Nick celebrates the beauty of nature and in particular his love of our local surroundings in the Bay of Plenty. 'Gulls Over Mauao' offers a completely new 'slant' on one of the Bay's most visited vantage points. You almost feel as if you've taken flight yourself.
Nick and his partner Paula emigrated to New Zealand from Guernsey, in the Channel Islands in 2006 and since then he has established a solid reputation as one of our leading Bay of Plenty artists.
Nick's entry 'Meditations in White' for the inaugural Miles Award at Tauranga Art Gallery was widely admired by those who saw it and the favourite of many I spoke to.
You will be able to see Nick demonstrating his water-colourist skills downtown at Creative Tauranga Art Fair 2011 on March 19.
He'll be at the B.A. Reader bookstore on Wharf Street and welcomes you to pop in for a chat about watercolour painting and , very appropriately-book illustration.
You can see more of Nick's work on www.artnik.weebly.com
Nick welcomes commission work and can be contacted at artnik@xtra.co.nz
by Pete Morris (2011).
Pete Morris is an occasional painter and an art lover. He is a freelance writer with a particular interest in promoting the visual arts in Tauranga.
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This page archived at Perma CC in November of 2016: https://perma.cc/RCR8-3QJX