NIKKI FOSTER

Tag: artistmother

  • 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.…

  • 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,”…

  • Always Restless, Always Longing

    These photographs were taken in my hometown of Bournemouth, with an M35 Kodak camera. The first photograph shows me sitting at my grandmother’s dressing table. I used to love sneaking into her bedroom and looking through her dressing table drawers at her lipsticks and foundations, eyeshadows and mascaras. My mother didn’t wear makeup, so it…

  • 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…

  • Let’s Bring This Outside

    ‘I don’t go to therapy, I Golf’ Troy in Beef, Season 2 Recently, at a party, I was sat with two women, one a close friend, one a friend of my close friend. My friend was talking about her experience visiting a Lacanian psychotherapist. ‘Oh, I don’t think he got a good read on you…

  • 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…

  • Red and Blue

    Last night I couldn’t sleep. I migrated to the sofa and lay awake, watching the silhouettes outside on the blind. I wasn’t daydreaming because it was night. I suppose I was ruminating. I wondered what I know of desire, how much is balanced by restraint. The colours red and blue these I know. Last night…

  • Original Features

    I would like to clarify the remark I made in With Love from the Suburbs about our house being eerie, to place it somehow, somewhere. What are the truths in this claim, if any? I could ask my kids. When they have to fetch something from an empty or unlit room, they dash there noisily, turning on…