Bath Society of Artists Open Exhibition 2024
Lawrence Nash wins the Pegasus Art Prize at the Bath Open
What inspired your winning painting? Tell us about the process and materials too please!
The piece of work is from a small series based on a question about regeneration.
The question I asked is: Can a previously ‘finished’ piece of work (in this case a painting) be looked at again and taken further?
Much goes into making a piece of work. You spend time and effort with it. It becomes part of you. Eventually a decision is made that it is finished.
Such a process involves a personal ‘letting go’ of the connection to the work – and looking again with new eyes.
I’m also working on another series that involves line drawings using acrylic paint pens. Lines are drawn on paper, cut out into thin strips and pasted as a kind of collage.
For the winning piece I have applied this ‘line’ collage process to transform the original painting.
At what point in your painting journey did you move towards abstraction?
I’m not sure there is a specific time when my work became ‘abstract’. I’m not sure there is a specific time that the art world became ‘abstract’.
There are many quotes that state all artwork is abstract.
I think such definitions are old fashioned. Even the artworks that are highly representative are not merely a depiction of an item – for the work to have value it must go beyond this.
‘This is not a pipe’ 1929 by Rene Magritte.
Sometimes representing an object can just get in the way of what the work is really about.
“The need is for felt experience – intense, immediate, direct, subtle, unified, warm, vivid, rhythmic.”
~ Robert Motherwell
Generally, we don’t question the abstraction that is music. We are open to its power.
We should have the same attitude to all artwork and forget the labels of representation and abstraction and be open to what is really going on in a piece of work.
Are you a full time artist? Tell us how you make it work.
Being an artist is a full time job. When you observe something – you do so with the mind of an artist, walking in the park, having a meal, stroking the cat. All can influence what work you produce next.
In this sense I’ve always been a full time artist, but I suspect what you are really asking is ‘do I make a living from it’ – and the answer is no. I sell occasionally, but there is never a ‘profit’.
I’m now recently retired, but I did a different job to pay the bills.
You are a member of the Bath Society of Artists and have been very involved with the RWA – tell us why it’s important to be part of a wider artist community.
I’m an Academician at the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol and a member of the Bath Society of Artists.
I was a committee member for the RWA for 4 years and a committee member for Bath Society of Artists for 6 years.
I’ve been on selection panels for both the BSA and the RWA.
It’s not easy to become a member of the BSA or to become an Academician at the RWA – and that’s how it should be.
For me, being elected to these institutions is the recognition and acceptance of my qualities as an artist and a person, by my peers.
In being elected, you become part of a community of other artists that have also been through that recognition and status. It doesn’t mean that we all agree – often we don’t – and that is also as it should be – but a mutual respect within a group of artists is a rare beast and a great thing.
Buildings are important. The BSA have exhibited in the Victoria Art Gallery for many years and this continuity is im-portant. It creates a very special experience. All of the discussions and arguments, all of the artworks that have been shown in the gallery leave their mark – all of that energy is somehow retained in the walls.
This isn’t aerie fairy nonsense, this is palpable. Next time you visit the Victoria Art Gallery take a few deep breaths, find a quiet moment to yourself and you will feel it – decades of traditions passionately argued about and replaced with new ways of interpreting – only to become, through time, traditions in themselves – and so the cycle continues.
What art materials do you favour and why?
I have worked with many different materials. It often takes a while to find the right materials to suit my needs.
There are no rules and so there are many false starts or dead ends, but when I find the right materials to suit my needs I tend to stay with them a while and explore.
For many years I’ve been using coloured pencil, acrylic paint, acrylic paint pen, but I’ve also worked with tablet, elec-tric light, video, glass – just about anything that will give me the results I’m looking for.
