Nick Carrick grew up in Stamford, Lincolnshire. He completed a Foundation course at Chelsea College of Art and gained a BA Hons at Coventry University. He worked in London at the Royal Academy and Tate as a technician for hanging shows, where he learnt about the many artists who influenced him, most notably The Philip Guston retrospective of 2005 at the RA. Throughout this period, he worked on his own practice as a painter, paying attention to current trends in art and curation

 

Carrick’s recent inspiration comes from his surrounding landscape including Spain where he spends time. He starts with an image from sketch, memory or photograph, and works it into a semi-abstraction, leaving geometric elements and biomorphic forms that refer to trees, buildings, paths and mountains. The forms take on metaphorical values, such as paths meaning journey, mountains as the struggle of life and painting itself, and trees that are a metaphor for growth and new beginning

 

Nick also draws inspiration from ancient Chinese ink paintings, 19th century Japanese woodblock prints, Van Gogh, and the bold, powerful paintings of painters such as Guston, Baselitz and Kiefer. He is inspired by regular trips to the Valencia region where he documents his journey through pastel drawings, photographs and sketches. He takes these back to his Hove studio and creates larger paintings

 

By layering the surface with paint, scraping and sanding down, and adding more colour, the process feels like memories of the same place, fading then being added to, and fading again. This serves as a metaphor for how we remember and forget about places

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Discover more about Nick's work in his own words

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