LOTTERY SHOW! winner '18 NICK WILD .'Singular/Cellular

About

studio1.1 London's 2018 'LOTTERY SHOW!' winner

Trained as a textile designer, for the past seven years Nick Wild has been working tirelessly (his own word) as a painter. Using a wide range of painting styles, matching the manner of presentation to each individual subject-matter, he paints a succession of motifs from the natural world, as themselves or as reminiscences of themselves. Stones, birds, moths or micro-organisms all appear in homage to the complexity of nature.

Birds are singled out for a particular tribute. In a photorealistic handling, scale could be exaggerated, contrasts of focus coupled with the interplay of pattern, and the composition heavily cropped. The birds, as a result, often shown in head-and-neck shots, acquire a distinctive, almost comically sinister life.

The cellular series, his most recent work, plays instead with notions of fragility. Delicate watercolour techniques strip form back to its basic elements: the egg, or cross-sections of cell amoeba suspended in solution surrounded by a thin membrane. In these paintings, where the biomorphic forms are sometimes set against a contradictory geometric background, sometimes even tweaked into a surrealist direction, the sense of abstraction becomes strong, along with the sense of the vulnerability of all organic life.

Nick is the tenth winner of studio1.1's annual Lottery Show! draw.

to buy tickets (£10) or for information on the draw for next year's LOTTERY SHOW! go to our website.