Nick Cockayne West Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Nick Cockayne is a West Yorkshire creator exploring the space between digital geometry and human frailty. Drawing on an IT background and seven years off-grid, his work combines CAD design with hand-assembly, using mediums from Giclée card, timber, and canvas to tiddlywinks, dominoes, and marbles.
My practice sits at the intersection of mathematical order, repetition, and human tactile craft.
Drawing from a 25-year career in IT infrastructure and a 7-year period living off-grid, my work examines how cold digital logic and human physical effort intersect.
Each piece begins as a precise geometric design in CAD software, I then translate these digital blueprints into physical forms entirely by hand. My material palette spans Giclée card tiles, structural foam, timber framing, acrylic paint on canvas, alongside everyday objects like tiddlywinks, dominoes, and marbles.
The computer provides the initial structure, scale, and spatial depth, but the manual cutting, placing, and layering introduce subtle, human irregularities. With the advent of AI, artwork can be realised through prompts and hitting print, this detaches the piece from humanity entirely, whereas I attempt to fuse the 2, by imagining the design, and using the computer as a tool to map my thoughts, then a combination of printer and human digit to realise the finished article, together with minor flaws, only seen at close quarters, that establish the presence of flawed humanity.
Across my work, I bring these opposites together: calculated mathematical systems brought to life through the physical, imperfect act of making.
Artwork
My Generation Baby, Hand-cut Giclée printed card tiles, plastic laminated plywood substrate, upcycled black mirror frame, 2026
Texture Like Sun, Hand-cut Giclée printed card tiles, closed-cell structural foam core, dual-layer MDF frame, sealed w, 2026
The Deepest Blue, Hand-cut Giclée printed card tiles, structural foam core, dual height timber frame, 2026