Nic Gear Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom
I have lived & walked both urban & natural environments including London & currently near Nottingham. In 2015 I completed an MA in Fine Art, using my culture of walking as primary source material, & I'm inspired by our experience & relationship to landscape. Each step I take adds another layer of memory, history, language & literary references to the work I make, looking to see beyond myself.
My artworks are indexical traces, inspired by the places in which I’ve walked. They include the material of landscape, such as using found oak galls to make ink by hand, collecting objects to cast from to make plaster sculptures, and photography, used for prints to write into and also make cyanotypes from. All ways in which I interrogate ways of seeing and navigating landscape. Lines & marks in the works invite considerations between pathways & early iterations of language. These become ‘language games’, relating to Wittgenstein’s concept. Eternity lines, ones without a beginning or end, sign the spiritual steps taken in the approach to my mark making. Repetitions in the drawing process become a meditation, akin to the effect on me walking. In addition to using my ‘walks collections’ I also use the traditional landscape painting material, watercolours. The technique is used in a contemporary way, making lines inspired by my walks. It is also combined with my other approaches to mark making, such as the oak gall ink. The work includes literary references, in writers like Nan Sheppard who whilst walking would both, lie down, & look through her legs, using her body to transform her relationship to landscape. This influence is reflected in my photography prints, which processed in photoshop, have elements turned and changed to make you ‘look again’ at the scene depicted. And, there’s the influence of the writer Robert MacFarlane, in his book ‘The Old Ways’ where he discusses how language, paths & walking are deeply enmeshed in each other and the ways in which we’re rooted in landscape. This gets reflected in my drawn language marks. The work is, thus multi-layered in its execution. Each element explores what we see & choose not to see; becoming a portal to perceive what lies beyond ourselves.
Artwork
Confined & Free [A Flow Diptych], Drawing, 2022
Echos [A Diptych], Drawing, 2022
Between [Twilight Lines] Diptych, Drawing, 2022
Alpha / Omega, Cast Plaster Sculpture , 2020, n/a
Alter Fragment [with Touchstone], Cast Plaster Sculpture, 2020, n/a
Coombe Time [Embedded], Sculpted Frottage Collage, 2020, £465
Crucible [with Five Memory Stones], Cast Plaster Sculpture, 2020, n/a
Heart of Matter [Pierced], Sewn Collage Drawing, 2020, £395
Undertow, Found Object Collage, 2020, n/a
The Hand [Boundary Lines], Mixed media, 2022, TBC