Nathan Ford
‘Our
interest’s on the dangerous edge of things. The honest thief, the tender
murderer, the superstitious aetheist’
(-Robert
Browning, From ‘Bishop Blougram’s Apology’)
In
W.G. Sebald’s novel Austerlitz, we find the central character as a schoolboy,
aware of neither his name nor his origins, feeling for his identity blindly, as
if through a forest at night, the landscape of his life slowly coming to light
around him. Drawn to study architecture, he is fascinated in particular by
train stations, which come to provide the setting, not only to his own
narrative, but to the much bigger story of his generation.
The
curved roofs of London’s Victorian railway stations also form the backdrop to
Nathan Ford’s latest collection of work. As Austerlitz was once drawn to
watching the transit of trains to and from stations, ‘obeying an impulse he
did not really understand’, so too Ford carries the memory of the trains
passing over the arches under which he played as a child in Herne Hill.
Though
Ford’s vast stations and cityscapes engulf their inhabitants, the cars and
buildings are fragmented, distorted, and often pushed towards the margins of the
paintings, as if to emphasise their lack of real permanence. Thoroughfares
are dwarfed in the brooding open landscapes. Roads curve and peter out
into the distance. Birds gather ominously. The man-made is made to
look small.
Despite
this impermanence, amid the energetic bustle and ferment of the urban life
depicted, we are it seems urged to appreciate the moments when life may slow
down for us. The small child rocking on his heels in The New Arrival.
The figure emerging in Terminal. After coming to know Ford’s monumental
station canvasses, I have found myself breaking the customary habit of the urban
traveller, and on stepping off the Paddington train, glancing backwards and
upwards at Brunel’s marvellous 150 year-old wrought iron curved ceilings.
But all this too it appears, will change utterly.
Indeed
the contrast of the fleeting moment and the fixedness and scale of the
architecture is an example of the contradiction which Ford thrives on.
Throughout the abstract and figurative elements of the work, there is the
dominant feeling of transition. In Three Generations his father’s eyes
are juxtaposed with the facial features of the artist himself together with
those of his paternal grandfather. Ford rarely paints a
straightforward self-portrait. The body of work in its entirety serves
this purpose adequately.
There
is an unnerving effect of first looking at these portraits which is similar to
first seeing the work of Francis Bacon. The rather severe frankness of
Chertov or the possibility of panic or aggressiveness in Residue are in stark
contrast to the mild-mannered artist himself. ‘Out of the studio I very
rarely lose control’, reports Ford. ‘But inside the paintings I am on
a knife edge between control and oblivion’.
It
is the tensions in Sebald’s novel that help the narrative to emerge, Polaroid
fashion. It pits the urge to know oneself against the dangers of
self-knowledge. There is the enquiring innocence of Austerlitz amid the
vastness of events that cast a cloud over his childhood. Ford’s
paintings are similarly disconcerting, simultaneously repelling and attracting
the viewer with an atmospheric mix of the accessible and the inscrutable. The
canvas is his battleground, but rarely does it reflect unfettered rage. In
fact his work, especially the portraits, is tempered with sensitivity,
consideration and restraint.
Despite the battle of contradictions being played out, and the serendipity of some of the mark-making, Ford is very purposeful, and an extremely selective judge of his own work. ‘I feel the need to rub out, to rework, restate, until clarity is achieved, or I am so lost in a morass of contradiction and repetition that it is pointless to continue’. Alternatively, as the bard of Reading Gaol put it ‘The well-bred contradict others. The wise contradict themselves’.
Aidan Quinn, 2007
Curriculum Vitae
Born
in London in 1976
Education
1997
- 2000 The Byam Shaw School of Art BA (HONS) Fine Art
1996
- 1997 Croydon College BTEC Foundation Course
1994
- 1996 John Ruskin College GNVQ Advanced Art and Design Course
Awards
2001,
2003 ROI - Windsor & Newton Young Artist of The Year Award, 1st
Prize
1999,
2000 ROI - Windsor & Newton Young Artist of The Year Award, 2nd
Prize
2001
RBA – Gordon Hulson Memorial Prize
1999
Young Artists’ Britain - The Prince of Wales’s Young Artists’ Award
1998
The Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers bursary in painting
1997
Full scholarship to study at the Byam Shaw School of Art for three years
Exhibitions
2003,
2005, 2007 Solo Exhibition,
Beaux Arts
2006,
2007
London Art Fair, Beaux Arts
2002
– 2006
Group Exhibitions, Fairfax Gallery, Chelsea
1999
– 2006
Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Mall Galleries, London
2005
‘Face Value’, Chelsea Art Gallery, Palo Alto, California, USA
2000
– 2004
Affordable Art Fair, London and New York
1997
– 2004
St. David’s Studio Gallery, Pembrokeshire
1997,
2003
Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London
2002
‘Urban Myths’, Beaux Arts – Bath
2001
Royal Society of British Artists, Mall Galleries, London
The Prince’s Foundation, London
Royal West of England Academy, Bristol
2000
New English Art Club, Mall Galleries, London
BP Awards, National Portrait Gallery, London
West Coast Art Fair, San Francisco
1999
Royal Society of Portrait Painters, Mall Galleries, London
Young Artists’ Britain, Hampton Court Palace, London
1998
‘Naked’, The Concourse Gallery, London
Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers, Livery Hall, London