Barbara Nicholls

Exhibited by Patrick Heide Contemporary Art

Material Watercolour on 638gsmHP Saunders Waterford

Dimensions 160 × 125 cm

Price €16,000

Status Vetted

About the Work

Barbara Nicholls' monumental watercolour works emerge by manipulating the behaviour of pigment in ever-increasing quantities of water. In her most recent works, Nicholls went through stages of liberation, breaking boundaries she once imposed on herself. Earlier works carefully maintain the white margins around the central shapes or never cross the margins of the paper. In works such as 'Airwave', she allows colours and compositions from underlying

applications to spill beyond the lines and fill the voids, expanding the composition past the outer edge. These colours, applied with a wide brush from the edge, become spectral tracings of distant landscapes. Yet, they also integrate into the drawings through what Nicholls describes as "fleeting winds”, the marks left behind

by a high tide on the sand, transient in time yet defining in its traces.

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