Today, we’re going behind the canvas with Nick Quirke, a contemporary artist whose expressive works are driven by emotion, process, and an ever-evolving relationship with colour. Working between sketchbooks, digital studies, and canvas, Nick’s practice is as much by shaped by music and intuition as it is by experience.
Q: Nick, When you start a new piece, what's the very first thing that you do?
NQ: I like to decide the idea or the feeling that I'm trying to express, and I put my ideas into sketchbooks. Or more recently I use digital sketches on my iPad to keep my ideas, and then work on that process.
Q: What's something in your creative process that people would be surprised to learn?
NQ: Music is a huge part of my art and my creative process. It depends on the topic but initially I will use a fast-paced piece of music to start the painting off with no lyrics. Lyrics confuse me a little bit at the start, and then the music genre will slowly change to slower paced music when I am painting details or I'm glazing.
Henley Blush
Q: What part of creating is the hardest for you?
NQ: Getting started is always a tricky part for me. There can be self-doubt, and you can be looking at other artists' work. You start questioning what you're doing; so making the start. Once I've made the start and I'm confident in how I'm shaping this painting, I'm okay from that point on. And I guess, yeah, finishing and knowing when a painting is finished. My way of looking at it is to leave the painting and just look at what you've done, what you've produced, and if you feel that it's missing something, you've got to work out what that is. And that's how I'll know when the painting's finished. Once I've put it on my wall and I can look at it and think, "Yeah, that's complete". Then I'm happy with that.
Q: When you look at your work now, what does it say about who you were when you made it?
NQ: It shows me how I think, feel, and grow over time. A piece of work that I produced last year, I know I'd approach it very differently now and looking at works that I have completed. I feel like I could improve those pieces and certainly approach it in a different way. For example, I was very lucky to get an extremely large commission from Dishoom in London last year. It was 4.5 meters high and 3.5 meters wide. At the time I was extremely worried about how I was going to produce an art piece on this scale. But I worked out a process and I was pleased with it. If I was to get another commission of that scale, I think I'd look at it and approach it slightly differently.
Q: How has your style changed over the years and why?
NQ: My art at the moment is going through a period of transition. You're always trying to look at ways to create effects on canvas; different colors and different mediums. In terms of how it's changed, I'm a lot more confident in how certain colours react with another colour. You've got so many different colours, there's 30 different types of red. A cadmium red is so powerful and strong, it can be a very difficult color to use. So knowing your colors for me has been really important and that's something that I've really learned, it's my trade. I feel like knowing what colours and how to use them has been a huge learning curve for me and has shaped how my work's developed over the last few years.
Q: What part of your personality shows up the most in your work?
NQ: My honesty. My emotions have showed up more recently. My mom passed away two years ago with a terminal illness, and I currently have a sick father in hospital with a terminal illness. I think it's hard not to use your life experiences and what you're going through on a day-to-day basis. I would say certainly at the moment there's a lot of honesty and emotions going through a lot of the work that I'm currently producing.
Q: What is the best piece of advice you have received?
NQ: Learning to be patient with myself. That's a huge thing. Trusting the process instead of rushing my work or comparing my work to other works that I've done or other artists. Ultimately, it's being patient with myself, making sure that I'm clear on the ideas, the topic, my color choice, how I'm going to approach the painting. You've just got to take time. But when I know the topic that I'm going to paint and I'm confident, I will go back and use my fast-paced music to create the initial marks on the canvas.
I have a solo art show on April the 25th in Amber Galleries, Henley-on-Thames. So please come along.
To view more of Nick's artworks and meet him in person at his solo exhibition subscribe to our newsletter for more details.