Nick Collerson

In Dreams

Clayton Utz Art Partnership 2018

Even if I could I wouldn’t want to tell you what my paintings mean, if I did there would be no reason to look at them. What I can say is that my paintings are made up of the lineaments of seeing, that I consider the poetics, or play of meaning in painting, before illusion or demonstrations of skill.

The way I approach making of paintings is much the same as the Mullah Nasruddin approaches ornithology in the following folk tale,  

One day the Nasrudin Found a weary falcon sitting on his window-sill. He had never seen a bird like this before. ‘you poor thing,’ he said, ‘however did you get into such a state?’

He clipped the falcon’s talons and cut its beak straight, and trimmed its feathers. ‘Now you look more like a bird,’ said Nasrudin.

My painting is essentially improvisational, beginning with finding some part of our world, usually form my environment, the streets around near where I work or some obscure corner of the internet, then finding out how it fits with painting.

My aim is not to be willfully obscure, instead, I consider what I am doing as making art.