Still Life with Olives and Pernod Painting

Nigel Sharman studied at the University of Brighton. Since leaving college in the mid 80’s, he has worked across several design fields both in the UK and in New York. While his formal artistic education took place in Brighton, he puts his real education down to ”being dragged round the galleries of West Penwith in Cornwall as a small boy by my father and introduced to work by Alfred Wallis and Ben Nicholson.” While currently living and working in London, Nigel’s roots are firmly in the South West of England, where the landscape and culture still influence his work. Nigel uses oil paint on canvas and has particular concern for colour and composition. He paints semi-figuratively, and starts from a source such as a landscape, a harbour, boats, a still life, or a nude. Nigel is fascinated by the beauty of ordinary everyday objects and often arranges compositions of great simplicity. Through their careful placement and attention to colour relationships he seeks to create a feeling of calm. He works with limited palette of often muted colours which are built up over layers. Harbours represent both places of calm and sanctuary and the beginning of a journey. Their mouths beckon to the outside unknown. He sometimes depicts nudes in semi-abstract coastal settings often represented by horizontal colour blocking. The flattened and simplified figures are either reclining on a beach or by the water’s edge. In the end Nigel hopes to create compositions that are at once deceptively simple and very sophisticated. They can be looked at each day and each day offer the viewer something different.