New Year, New Exhibitions

Our first reception exhibition for 2014 is Nigel Holt.  

Nigel won the popular vote in the Open section for the 2013 Pendle Open Art Exhibition. His prize was a solo exhibition and here it is.

 

 

 The winning entry was ‘Breaking all the Rules’…. 

 

This is a watercolour and is based on a football match, the match between Burnley FC and West Ham in fact, which saw Burnley go up to the premiership.  

West Ham have the nickname of the Hammers, and in this picture are reimagined as hammer sharks, the whole piece is a play on words and names; look out for Chris Eagles as a seagull and the Bob Lord Stand become a Cod Law Stand.

 

 

Nigel’s son owns the ‘award winning’ fish and chip shop, Holt’s in Nelson so this also gets a mention. And, for those of you who like a Chippy Tea, there is a print of this work in the shop – which is decorated in Claret and Blue – natch!  

 

Nigel is a Pendle born and bred man, who currently lives down the road from us in Barrowford. He comes from an artistic family where his grandfather and father were both artists. His Dad came along to help drop the work off and was telling me all about his sculptures. They sound great and hopefully I have convinced him to enter the sculpture category of the Open exhibition this year. But, back to Nigel! He is, by trade a metal polisher, but has always drawn and painted since he was a child.  He first was inspired by album covers, Pink Floyd in particular, and used to copy them and then expand on them and make them his own.

Now his inspirations mostly come from looking  at other artists work, particularly RogerDean  and Rodney Matthews.  

Nigel works in his front room, often with the TV on and music in the background, he doesn’t need peace and quiet – the more distractions the better. He drafts the work first, then turns it into a drawing and then works it up. He tends to work in either airbrush and ink or in watercolour and his works all include lots of detail.

 

 

His work is fantastical, but it just comes out of his head, sometimes he has a plan as to what the finished work will look like and sometimes he doesn’t, it can just happen.  He tends to work weekends mostly and one work can take several months.

 

 

So here are the other works Nigel is exhibiting… 

 

Nigel has entered and won Pendle in Paint (the old name for the Pendle Open Art Exhibition pre 2003, I think) a few times in the past. He likes to support the local ness of the exhibition and doesn’t enter any other opens. We’re lucky aren’t we!

He has shown work in libraries before but this is Nigel’s first show in a few years. He had a fairly big gap in painting between 1997 and 2005 when he started concentrating on making music. Nigel has a recording studio at home and writes and plays instrumental rock music on his guitar. He still does this and his next project may involve putting some of these together, showing his artwork and music at the same time.

Hope you enjoy the exhibition.

Thanks,

Kirsty