NIKKI FOSTER

Tag: art

  • To Be Let In

    Yesterday morning I booked a seat for a talk by Hettie Judah at Rua Red in Tallaght, Dublin: How to Enter the Art World After…  Around the same time, I read this line by writer Sara Baume in an article written for Ocula magazine: ‘I am a solitary person, generally disinclined, at this stage in my life, to…

  • Eyes in Midsummer

    It’s summer, a hot summer. Every day we head out in shorts and t-shirts. The grass turns yellow. Our skin freckles and darkens, and we compare arms. Most days are busy and I have little time. I write a few words in my journal, what we did, if we tried anything new, any strange dreams.…

  • Just One More Push

    This morning, I woke up groggy after double-dosing on the valerian tablets I take to help me sleep. I think it’s okay to double dose because they’re herbal, but it takes an hour or so in the morning to shake off the daze. My six-year-old son came running into the kitchen. “Mummy, Mummy, look!” He…

  • Worlding

    My sister rang me this evening, and we chatted about everyday things. On the video call, she is walking along a promenade in Faro. “How is your artwork going, Nik?” A surprise question, which catches me off guard. “Um, good, I think. I’ve just finished two large paintings.” “Oh yeah? What are they about?” “Oh,”…

  • Deconstructing, Reconstructing

    Can we play a game? My son asks as he takes a sip from a bottle of water. I pause to take a photograph, framing him from low down to catch the rim of light on his hands and face. When you take a photograph, you step outside of the moment. Out of time, the…

  • Remote Response

    It is, for me, always strange and exciting to see my paintings hung in a gallery space through a digital image, knowing I will not be present in person to see the work itself. You imagine yourself standing there, looking at your work, looking at the other works around it. Maybe you even get a…

  • Making Chaos Between Forms

    The line marking lucidity from darkness is yet to be marked out. Adrienne Rich, From an Old House in America (1974) I propose to make a body of work in the form of a series of zines that explore unstable oppositions through a convergence of imagery and text. These include, among others, the familiar and…

  • Bold

    This afternoon I felt the first warm sun of spring on my face. When I closed my eyes the glow was coral red. Red sky in the morning, shepherds warning. Favourite lipsticks: orange red for day, berry red for night. Indian red is on my palette because it’s awkward and dirty and seems to resist…

  • Blue Slippy

    I started this painting on an A1 piece of paper, working in washes from a photograph. I wanted more weight from it, in paint, and more distance from the photo. So I cut it up and mounted it on three small canvases, 30 x 40 cm. I have discovered this glue which dries completely clear…

  • Flow

    I just read Fake Whale’s ‘The Ontology of Flow’ recommended by artist Ian Mc Inerney on Merrigan’s Substack. It’s a really great read, very apt about the conditions of our online experience, particularly in relation to art making and the consumption of imagery. But how does it make me feel or think as an artist?…