nicky knowles RWA

Nicky Knowles is a Royal West of England Academy academician - elected in 2018. She was born in London in 1970, but spent her formative years in Cambridgeshire, and now lives in Somerset. We visited her two years ago and spent a lovely summers day in her garden studio selecting work for our personal collection. I have mentioned many times that Mel and I first met in Cambridge and the City holds many a fond memory for us both and our children. It never ceases to amaze me how many of our friends share similar lifetime experiences and Nicky is a case in point . Like us, Nicky shares a love of mid century British painting and the St Ives school of artists and has spent many a happy hour immersed in the Jim Ede’s collection at Kettles Yard in Cambridge.

Nicky Knowles works intuitively, putting down colour, marks and shapes in paint and paper aiming to create an image of balance and unity. Nicky’s collage work echoes the mid century British art scene that she so admires but she has also developed her own distinguishable style which is both strong in its confident use of scale, mark making and lyrical composition.

“My collages explore a dialogue between paint and paper. They reflect a process of lyrical play with cut and torn forms from new and heavily worked materials which I distress using wax and paint. I love the process of distressing the paper and canvas before I start to collage and then incorporating these historic materials alongside new paper or a cleanly painted surface. There is a tension between the new and the old and the balancing of the shapes that I find endlessly fascinating”
Nicky Knowles