Artist and designer Nicole Rose’s work explores the emotional response to the natural world around her. Nicole graduated from Central St Martins School of Art in 1992 with a BA in Graphic Design. She has had a successful career as a Creative Director, running her own commercial design studio for many years, and now works from her art studio in North London. Alongside her abstract landscape oil paintings, she creates complementary prints that are at once a reflection of the original painting – and a new perspective on it. Focusing on a photographed section of a finished painting, Nicole works in Photoshop to reimagine and rebalance, creating a run of limited-edition giclée prints that are both a part of the original works – and a fresh response to the landscape in their own right.
Nicole’s current selection of abstract and dream-like prints are derived from paintings created during the past year, following visits to nature reserves where she recorded sights, sounds, colours, and routes. Two of these recent releases are Frequency and Harmony, for which inspiration came not solely from a beautiful view, but also the light shining through trees, and the shapes of paths. The artist comments; “Inspiration also comes from my own thoughts and feelings which definitely play a part in colours I choose when creating new work”.
Nicole’s process is fairly circular; she starts with some photos, sound recordings of places she visits, and snippets of music she may have been listening to at the time. She then works in Photoshop to evolve shapes and colour combinations which she uses as a reference, or starting point, before moving to the canvas. Nicole paints in oils, layering and blending different shapes of colour to recreate her emotional response onto the canvas. Nicole states; “Although my starting point is from a landscape or a place I’ve visited, I try to represent it onto the canvas or a print with feeling and emotion – a series of coloured shaped blended to recreate the sense of a place – or the sense of how I feel about a place.”
From her paintings, she takes photos of various sections, which she then brings back into Photoshop; reworking the images to create digital pieces. Even though these pieces originate from her paintings, they take on a different quality from their origins. “I can spend hours on digital images, balancing out the colours and levels, blurring and blending, until I’m happy with the outcome,” says Nicole. The process then starts again, and quite often she will refer back to the digital prints when she starts a new painting. Her paintings can even look like they are airbrushed or digitised, as Nicole seeks to recreate the blurring tools of Photoshop onto canvas!
Nicole is currently working on developing a collection of collages which will be made from repurposed sections of her paintings and prints, and turned into a series of limited edition prints. She has recently exhibited at The Other Art Fair in London and the Contemporary Art Fair. She has been selected to show one of her prints at the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair in November.
Frequency and Harmony are each available in 3 sizes: 40 x 40, 50 x 50 , and 60 x 60. Printed on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth 305gsm in a limited edition to 10 of each size.
Shop Nicole Roses’ collection on DEPT.STORE.
www.nicole-rose.co.uk
@nicolerose_design_and_art
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