Press Release | Graham Nickson | March 2008

Graham Nickson
March 6 - 29, 2008

British-born artist Graham Nickson (b. 1946) has been an important influence in American figurative art, both as a practicing artist and an outstanding teacher at the New York School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture. Nickson, studied at the Royal College of Art, and Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, both in England. Nickson was awarded the Prix de Rome, and studied and worked at the British School in Rome from 1972 to 1974. Before moving to New York, he returned to Rome as a member of the painting faculty of the British School. Since his arrival in New York from Great Britain in 1976, both Nickson's paintings and teaching marathons have become well-known. His methodology is based on the practice of drawing, the most literal example being the popular marathon workshops that have put the New York School on the artistic map. Mr. Nickson is dean of the New York School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture.

His current watercolors include the classic figures-in-a-landscape motif. Clothed nudes populate broad stretches of sand against vibrant skies---sometimes at dusk, sometimes at dawn, sometimes in the rain. One bather spreads a towel on the sand. Another pulls his shirt off. A third is drying her hair. And each one of them is doing it alone, without reference to anyone else. Is it the overwhelming strength and vibrancy of surrounding nature that turns these people into themselves in an effort to hold their heads up? Or is it the artist’s view of the solitary nature of the human condition? A vivid but brooding palette intensifies the viewer’s experience of the natural world---intensifies it to the point of fantasy despite its everyday familiarity.

Hilton Kramer said, “Mr. Nickson’s huge charcoal drawing from the Rain Bather series is as close to being a masterpiece as any drawing I have lately seen by a living artist, and it immediately places Mr. Nickson in the forefront of his generation.”

Graham Nickson’s work can be seen in the collection of Albright Knox Art Gallery, NY; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; The Neuberger Museum, NY; La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, CA; The Israel Museum; and numerous private collections. Awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship; The Prix de Rome; Harkness Fellowship, Yale University; Howard Foundation Fellowship, Brown University; and an Ingram Merrill Award.