Nathan Ford

Born in London, 1976. Lives and works in Wales

Nathan Ford graduated from The Byam Shaw School of Art in 2000 and has since been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Bath, London, and internationally. His work has been included in the BP Portrait Awards, winning the Visitors Choice Prize in 2011.

Ford grew up in London, and references to London’s landscape and architecture can be seen in his paintings, especially references to Norwood and Crystal Palace where he spent his childhood. Ford moved to a village in rural Wales in 2002. His family, especially his children Joachim and Rueben, feature heavily in his work, whether in the form of atmospheric, detailed portraits within sparse backgrounds, or within cityscapes. Ford’s work is a practice of sensitively considering and economising line, each brush stroke or charcoal mark is charged with meaning, memory, feeling. At the heart of his work are notions of identity, place and family.

Catalogue Essay

Anybody who preserves the ability to recognise beauty will never get old.
-Franz Kafka

Nathan Ford’s paintings are an essential part of his communication with the outside world. He marks the passing of time with portraits of his children, family and friends, all faces he knows beyond mere flesh. His larger works, mainly urban landscapes, are an exploration of fleeting sensations of light, form and colour. Still-lifes, with flowers on the point of dying, are in one sense momento mori, though Nathan bridles at such a direct allusion. ‘They are about remembering and forgetting. Even the process of painting them is helpful, despite the emotion being raw. But I wonder if I am telling myself stories. How can I know the truth of why exactly I am doing these paintings?’

This musing is appropriately Kafkaesque. He points to the initial inspiration for the figure in Platform as the main character in The Trial. We find our Jozef K looking suitably forlorn, legs splayed redundantly as he waits on a bench at Baker Street, dwarfed by the long cascading emptiness of the underground station.
Playfulness too is a vital feature in Nathan’s work, and the artist enthuses about the influence of his sons Reuben (12) and Joachim (10). Their drawings are prominent in Vicenza (cover image), among other works, and there is an unbridled inventiveness and joy in their own GreyHope paintings. A shared sense of humour and experience (see Smoking Fags at the Exit) are products of a strong family bond and a high mutual regard for creative endeavour and self-reliance. Indeed over the two decades I have known Nathan I have appreciated his quiet, determined single-mindedness. From choosing, cutting and finishing the wood for his frames, to the merest mark-making on the largest painting, Nathan approaches all aspects of his work, practical and artistic, with careful deliberation and focus. He has also found a rhythm in the sequence of processes involved in preparing for a biennial exhibition.

The appearance of his late father Stan highlights the emotional import of the larger works, something that may be more obvious in the portraits, where the concentration on the subjects’ eyes intensifies the ‘eye-contact’, or in the preoccupation with mortality in the still-lifes. Once attracted to look at his urban works one discovers that they have a compelling depth, due in no small part to the detailed architecture, carefully rendered though scarcely noticeable at first.

When describing why one of the larger landscapes grates, Nathan repeatedly remarks ‘It doesn’t work, I can’t inhabit it’. I imagine the artist standing before one of these paintings, the work sloping down in a curve towards his feet in the manner of a skateboard ramp, enlivening the sensation of stepping into the scene. Only within a solid and subtle composition is he unconfined and free to take us on a visual adventure, to enjoy the highlighted areas of emphasis, or to follow a light trail into darker recesses, and the smells and fluid buzz of a city thoroughfare.
Though family is a thread woven deep into the work, the paintings are not historical or sentimental. There are streets we may feel we recognise, and actual locations in south-east London, some of them framed within painted black lines which give them the feel of looking at old negatives. We see Crystal Palace and Herne Hill, or the Brighton sea-front. Ford attests however that ‘the place itself, where it is, is not important. It’s just a stage set.’ Sunny inside, spotted in West Norwood on a visit to see Stan in hospital, has the appearance of a choreographed arrangement of scaffolding. It is a wonderful balance of muted colour, immersive rather than dramatic. A non-descript understated scene that one can lose oneself in. Nathan has this brand of finely-tuned subtlety in his gift and it gives the work its heft, its longevity.

He is compelled to record a moment in time with its catalyst a visual sensation – an emotion that he wants to convey and make seen. Such a thing of beauty is described in Seamus Heaney’s Postcript :

Useless to think you’ll park or capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there, A hurry through which
known and strange things pass

With Heaney it is swans appearing out of nowhere, broadsiding his car in County Clare. Though it can’t be ‘captured’, emphasising the synchronicity of the moment, he nevertheless does paint a lyrical picture of the wind and light ‘working off each other’ on the ‘flaggy shore’ as the swans appear. Only a poem will do.

What obviously moves Nathan in these urban vistas is the ‘shape of the light’, the honest, recognisable and recognisably Fordian pallor of a dusky, dripping, falling English sky, the hum of an inky blue evening in south London, a flash of orange on Brighton Esplanade, a streak of trailing traffic light scored on to a twilit Norwood High Street. And there is Stan, Nathan’s late father, his hunched gait clearly recognisable, sloping along the pavement outside West Norwood crematorium, his particular piece of the stage-set illuminated with the merest touches of white on the line of the kerb. Ford, like Heaney, doesn’t shout. Only a painting will do. A painting that is as balanced as it is subtle as it is remarkable.

Aidan Quinn January 2019

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

2019

Solo Exhibition, Beaux Arts Bath

London Art Fair, Islington with Beaux Arts Bath

2018

BP Portrait Exhibition, Mall Galleries London, and touring

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