Posts by Nicholas Wilton

I went off on a bit of a tangent and did these small square 24″ x 24″ paintings just using minimal color. I tried to work on them all together and imagined them all hanging in one group. I wanted to see how simple I could get them so from across the room they looked…

For Valentines day I bought my daughters small tins of gourmet jellybeans. Hannah left for a week on a school field trip to Quebec and accidentally left it in my studio. This is a temptation too great for any person, especially me already weakened by the prospect of facing a difficult painting. I have already…

This idea of crappy painting in the beginning always reminds me of Anne Lamott, the Bay Area writer who said “I always do a shitty first draft” I think about that a lot when beginning a painting. It’s much easier and in the end, because you don’t care, there sometimes results some remarkable passages of…

In the beginning I just lay down whatever I am thinking about… trying not to judge whatever it is or wether it looks good or not. This painting is at the stage that I don’t really like too much of what is presently there. It feels simplistic, thin and overly decorative. This is early in…

This is where I ended up. This was an interesting painting for me. The darks had to be really strong as they are not particularly dynamic shapes. I wanted the eye to bounce around and then have the quieter elements softly converse… Two conversations going simultaneously. This composition almost feels musical to me. I was…

A recent article, passed along by a friend, written by Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point), illuminates this idea that some artists are fiercely direct and quick with their art. No experimentation, no search- just an incandescent manifestation of work–Picasso. On the other hand, there are those, the “late bloomers” (me too) that sort of grope…