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Kate Nicholson, the daughter of Ben and Winifred Nicholson, was born
in Bankshead, Cumbria, but is more closely associated with St Ives,
which she visited with her parents as a child, and where she settled
in 1956. She became a teacher, having studied art at Bath Academy between
1949 and 1954, but above all is known in her own right as an exceptionally
talented and subtle painter. She joined the Penwith Society of Artists,
renowned for its breakaway modernism, in which her father had played
a key role, and despite her modest output was represented in the Arts
Council tour ‘Six Young Painters’ in 1961, and has had solo
shows at Waddington Galleries and the Marjorie Parr Gallery in London.
Commercially available examples of her work are extremely scarce.
Peter Maber
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Untitled (Coastal Light)
1967
Watercolour and gouache
inscribed to the reverse
54 x 71cm. Beige painted wooden frame.
£1,450 (framed)
During her most productive decade, the 1960s, Nicholson's work
became increasingly abstract, distilling elements of the landscape into
primal essences, and foregrounding, like her mother, effects of light
and colour. 'Untitled (Coastal Light)' recalls late Turner, in particular
his 'Land's End' paintings of the 1830s. As is typical of Nicholson, the
work depends upon the interplay of forces: of the contrasts between watercolour
swathes and luminous strokes of gouache; and between rapid, thrown paint
that runs, and thicker, opaque application that sits firm. The work is
structured around the curve form, as well as around colour, moving out
of the shadows to climax in the intensity of the yellows and ochre of
the centre. As in Turner, there is the suggestion, perhaps, of waves breaking
on rocks, and of sunlight breaking through cloud and rain; but the painting
refuses to resolve itself, and remains powerfully subtle in its abstraction.
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