Richard Nott

Richard Nott’s paintings are unique. There are no oil or acrylic paints in his studio, he works with industrial materials, bitumen, emulsions and varnishes, building them up layer upon layer, often over intimately drawn or gouged grids, lines or marks, into a textural palimpsest, before courageously scraping or burning them back to reveal what lies underneath. Viewing Richard Nott’s artwork is witnessing a protracted collision of creative and destructive processes. An evolution of matter, exposed, concealed, exposed, concealed, continuously. His paintings become the consequence of years spent where Nott’s history merges with the history of the elements used. He has little interest in illusionistic ‘texture’, the work must be its own entity, have its own story and be its own statement. His objective is to create an organic object that evolves like a living thing with truth and imperfection. His process of working allows for a contemplation of a cycle of existence to become imbued in to the work. Not a beginning with an end but a journey where genesis leads to dissolution, and on once again to genesis. Something eternal akin to alchemy...