Nigel Siddall  -  Artist & Writer

 

The pictures here span a wide range of differing styles and topics, partly because they represent the work of quite a few years and partly because Nigel has always like to experiment and to follow the moods and whims that capture the imagination. This is particularly true of those pictures which date back to one or other of the phases that he has gone through during the last twenty years. You will see many pictures of flowers, some from his early days, some from the Covid lockdowns where he, like many, was limited to the confines of a garden for his inspiration, all though carrying the big, expansive colours that he has long loved. There are plenty of faces too. Most, but not all, are his takes on other artists' self portraits - Van Gogh, Cezanne, Picasso, Monet, Rembrandt, Freud to name but a few. These are all the product of his fascination with the work of other artists and his wish to understand their style and their character by examining their brushstrokes and technique in the best way possible, by reproducing the pictures themselves.

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More recently, he has been absorbed by landscapes, preferably of somewhere rugged and remote, and buildings, sometimes abandoned, sometimes glorious, but always huge in their atmosphere and feeling. In this he admits to the influence of other artists, most frequently John Piper, and has used the context as a vehicle for the same big-coloured approach as before. There are also mischievous adaptations of famous paintings. Lookout for the take on Caravaggio's Bacchus or that of Raphael's Pope Julius 2. There are of course more that could be mentioned but, suffice it to say, the collection is diverse, dynamic - and COLOURFUL!!