Nick Dawes

Lives and works in London, UK

Artist statement

Colour and text appropriated from signs, road markings and the Highway Code relocate within the language of high Modernist Abstraction. Sampling a single word as a point of departure, the text structures and processes the composition so that the poured lines of paint specifically relate to the formal values of each letter. Using an expanded version of watercolour painting, form is slowly built up in a series of poured layers that penetrate, diffuse and run, generating a translucent visual dynamic where solid components dissolve and flow into a vocabulary of fluid entities. Displacing the the purity of the colour-field, multiple narratives reveal within a loose-fitting organic syntax, diluting the binary opposition between presence and absence, order and chance, fluidity and stasis. Making reference to the reality of today’s world where words and images are constantly in transit, the works explore and question the allegiance between pure fact and its displacement, collapsing the relationship between image and text, while simultaneously blurring the boundaries between functionality and abstraction.

Artwork