NIKKI FOSTER

Tag: Photography

  • Drifting

    In the south of France, we arrive in the touristy seaside town of Argelès-sur-Mer. The heat is constant and cloying. It kind of feels soothing in an immersive way. I haven’t brought anything with me, art-wise, except a small sketchbook and a kid’s pencil case with the basics we can share. I left a painting…

  • 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,”…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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?…