44 pages, 22 x 28 cm. All illustrations are from original paintings by Nathan Ford.
A limited number of books will be signed by the artist, contact us here for more information.
‘How to Make a Proper Alien’ a new book by Nathan Ford (front cover)
‘How to Make a Proper Alien’ by Nathan Ford (pages 2 and 3)
‘How to Make a Proper Alien’ by Nathan Ford (pages 4 and 5)
Catalogue Essay
Sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.
Graham Greene
Given events in his life since his last solo exhibition two years ago, the question of what preoccupies Nathan Ford in his latest body of work, for me prompts a more fundamental inquiry. Why does he paint?
Though far from being inarticulate, Nathan seems not to fully trust his ability to describe the whys or wherefores of what he does, at times stopping in mid-explanation as if he has let himself down, swimming energetically in the wrong direction and becoming tangled in tangential verbiage.
He is as an artist neither purely a planner or a discoverer. His large urban paintings have a purposeful and careful architecture, whilst the small portraits are underlaid with idiosyncratic skeletal patterns. Paintings large and small may include random-looking marks and smudges, or meandering lines and boxes. At times preliminary measurements and calculations are pencilled along the edges or near to the face of a portrait subject.
It seems when painting there is a desire to preserve a record of every visit to a canvas; the ground-work, the plan, but also the serendipity, the wondering and wandering which is sometimes neat and quick, or occasionally lost in battle near the finish-line. Nathan’s mother attests to his slow writing and ponderous reading, and at an early stage of his childhood he was conscious of having to develop strategies to get around this. It is not hard to see how a natural facility for drawing would be encouraged and amplified.
So there is initially a definite structure, but no fixed destination. He revels in finding threads, visual resonances, in his own way and in his own time. Though it perhaps seems like a habit of the contrarian, it may simply have germinated from a response to dyslexia, and gives him a very singular rationale. At times I think of Nathan as a painting version of the E.M. Forster character who exclaims, ‘Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish! How can I tell you what I think till I see what I say?”
He has developed a flowing visual language with a pronounced, unashamed accent, reinforced by the graft and craft of years of practice. His paintings are effervescent yet finely balanced, here spare, there sharp, always suggestive rather than insistent, encouraging the viewer to seek out more, to look more intently. It is this that gives the work longevity.
Painting is Nathan’s prime mode of communication, a means for talking about his life, as well as to condense information into visual form. We see his children growing up, going out into the world, wandering through city streets, dwarfed by square urban building complexes or huge walls of graffiti. We see the children’s bees, their hulking monsters, their ragged-toothed fish, their flying pigs, informing the more expansive streetscapes, and standing as their own discrete works in the Grey Hope series.
There are portraits of people he is very familiar with, among these, of course, his parents. However the fulcrum of the show is 20 paintings of similar format which were included in a recently published book, How to Make a Proper Alien. The book was in part prompted by the death of two friends. However the major driver was the terminal sickness of his children’s closest friend, Nathan’s 10 year old nephew Thomas. It is Nathan’s response to the inability to impart suitable or relevant words of comfort to those nearest to him. These paintings are also a way of being, a creative pathway out of the interstices of grief; an act of something from nothing that allows one to be made new, to move forward.
The sense of renewal is pertinent. By the time his exhibition at Beaux Arts begins, the artist and his family will have moved house. The 3 studio window paintings in the show are lined with coloured bottles left from the previous occupant, unearthed from the garden years ago on moving in. They have contained plants that grew in the garden, placed in the bottles as momento mori. The objects in the window sill paintings appear to shimmer and fade, presaging change.
In order to say something meaningful about one’s life it seems necessary to shut out as much as possible any fear, doubt, or discomfiture that might ensue from the act of personal revelation that a solo show may involve. It requires confrontation, experimentation, a willingness to fail, a fair share of creative inertia, and simply keeping one’s eyes open despite the urge to look away. The bi-annual focus of a one man exhibition has given Nathan a rhythm to work within. He uses the cycle of time in the only way he knows – instinctively, with purpose, in a manner that will I am sure engage his many admirers, whether they know a particular work’s inspiration or not. In spite of the seam of precious mortality that runs throughout, these are not melancholy paintings. They are touched with a mature sense of skill and awareness, a child-like ingenuity, and most importantly of all, the subtle harmony of authenticity.
Aidan Quinn, January 2017
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
2017 Discerning Eye, Invited artist and regional prize, Mall Galleries, London.
2016 The Ruskin Prize, Walsall and London – shortlisted artist.
2015 Art in Action Oxfordshire, Best of the Best – 2nd prize.
2014 Art in Action Oxfordshire, Best of the Best – 1st prize.
2013 National Art Open, Towry Regional Prize, London and Chichester.
2011 BP Portrait Awards, Visitors Choice 2nd Prize, National Portrait Gallery, London.
2010 Royal Institute of Oil painters, Winsor & Newton Young Artist Award, 1st Prize, Mall Galleries, London.
2004 Royal Institute of Oil painters, Winsor & Newton Young Artist Award, Commendation, Mall Galleries, London.
2001, 2003 Royal Institute of Oil painters, Winsor & Newton Young Artist Award, 1st Prize, Mall Galleries, London.
1999, 2000 Royal Institute of Oil painters, Winsor & Newton Young Artist Award, 2nd Prize, Mall Galleries, London.
2001 Royal Society of British Artists, Gordon Hulson Memorial Prize, Mall Galleries, London.
1999 Young Artists’ Britain, The Prince of Wales’s Young Artists’ Award, Hampton Court Palace, London.
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
Selected Exhibitions
2018
London Art Fair, Islington with Beaux Arts Bath
2017
‘Small Works for Christmas’ – Beaux Arts Bath
Beaux Arts Bath, Solo Exhibition
London Art Fair, Islington with Beaux Arts Bath
2016
London Art Fair, Islington with Beaux Arts Bath
The Ruskin Prize, The New Gallery Walsall and London.
LAPADA Art and Antiques Fair, London
2015
Beaux Arts Bath, Solo Exhibition
London Art Fair, Islington with Beaux Arts Bath
Unfurl, Gallery 1261, Denver
National Art Open, London and Chichester
Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize, London.
2014
Beaux Arts Bath, Artists of Fame and Promise
20/21 Art Fair, Royal College of Art, London
2013
Beaux Arts Bath, Solo Exhibition
London Art Fair, Islington with Beaux Arts Bath
20/21 Art Fair, Royal College of Art, London
National Art Open, London and Chichester
Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize, London.
2012
Beaux Arts Bath, Summer Exhibition
BP Awards, National Portrait Gallery London
Sunday Times Watercolour Competition, London
Royal Society of Portrait Painters, Mall Galleries, London.
London Art Fair, Islington with Beaux Arts Bath
20/21 Art Fair, Royal College of Art, London
Holbourne Portrait Prize, Bath. 2012
Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Mall Galleries, London
Royal Society of British Artists, Mall Galleries, London
2011
Beaux Arts Bath, Solo Exhibition
BP Awards, National Portrait Gallery London
20/21 Art Fair, Royal College of Art, London
London Art Fair, Islington with Beaux Arts Bath
Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Mall Galleries, London
Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London
Lilly Zeligman Gallery, The Netherlands
2010
Beaux Arts Bath, Summer Exhibition
BP Awards, National Portrait Gallery London
London Art Fair, Islington, London
20/21 Art Fair, Royal College of Art, London
Art London
Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Mall Galleries, London
Lilly Zeligman Gallery, The Netherlands
2009
Beaux Arts Bath, Solo Exhibition
London Art Fair, Islington, London
20/21 Art Fair, Royal College of Art, London
Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Mall Galleries, London
2008
London Art Fair, Islington, London
20/21 Art Fair, Royal College of Art, London
‘Crossing Over’, Beaux Arts Bath
Eisteddfod, Cardiff
Royal Society of Portrait Painters, Mall Galleries, London
Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Mall Galleries, London
2007
Beaux Arts Bath, Solo Exhibition
London Art Fair, Islington, London
20/21 Art Fair, Royal College of Art, London
Art London
Summer Exhibition, Beaux Arts Bath
Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Mall Galleries, London
Victor Felix Gallery, London
2006
London Art Fair, Islington, London
Art London
Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Mall Galleries, London
Artists of Fame and Promise, Beaux Arts Bath
Kooywood Gallery, Cardiff
2005
Beaux Arts Bath, Solo Exhibition
London Art Fair, Islington, London
Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Mall Galleries, London
‘Face Value’, Chelsea Art Gallery, Palo Alto, California, USA
Kooywood Gallery, Cardiff
Victor Felix Gallery, London
2004
Artists of Fame and Promise, Beaux Arts Bath
Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Mall Galleries, London
Fairfax Gallery, Chelsea, London and Tonbridge Wells
Victor Felix Gallery, London
St. David’s Studio Gallery, Pembrokeshire
2003
Beaux Arts Bath, Solo Exhibition
Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London
Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Mall Galleries, London
Slice 1, Jacob’s Market, Cardiff
Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Mall Galleries, London
St. David’s Studio Gallery, Pembrokeshire
2002
‘Urban Myths’, Beaux Arts Bath
Affordable Art Fair, London and New York
Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Mall Galleries, London
Fairfax Gallery, Chelsea, London and Tonbridge Wells
Royal Society of British Artists, Mall Galleries, London
2001
Summer Show, Beaux Arts Bath
Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Mall Galleries, London
Royal West of England Academy, Bristol
St. David’s Studio Gallery, Pembrokeshire
Royal Society of British Artists, Mall Galleries, London
2000
Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Mall Galleries, London
Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London
St. David’s Studio Gallery, Pembrokeshire
2001
Royal Society of British Artists, Mall Galleries, London
The Prince’s Foundation, London
Royal West of England Academy, Bristol
St. David’s Studio Gallery, Pembrokeshire
2000
New English Art Club, Mall Galleries, London
BP Awards, National Portrait Gallery, London
West Coast Art Fair, San Francisco
St. David’s Studio Gallery, Pembrokeshire
1999
Royal Society of Portrait Painters, Mall Galleries, London
Young Artists’ Britain, Hampton Court Palace, London
St. David’s Studio Gallery, Pembrokeshire
1998
‘Naked’, The Concourse Gallery, London
Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers, Livery Hall, London
