Nicky Basford is with paint as a poet is with words: thoughtful, precise, and wonderfully articulate. Her beautifully balanced compositions - be it landscape, still life, or the human form – reveal an artist with a rare gift for line and colour. I have been following Nicky’s career for over twenty years, from the early days in St. Ives where she produced superb paintings full of light and energy, to this most recent collection of canvasses – her best yet – which are technically masterful while retaining a gentleness and sensitivity that gives her work its unforgettable heart and soul.
Will Gompertz
BBC arts editor
Biography
Nicky studied at Chelsea, Camberwell and Newcastle schools of Art and, after a career in art and retail, returned to full time painting in 2001. She has exhibited widely in this country and abroad. Nicky lives and works in London and is about to embark on her eighth solo show.
A personal note
I describe myself as a semi-abstract landscape painter but more accurately I mean that I’m concerned with the recollection of a place not it’s reproduction. So my work is a combination of memory, emotion and physical detail and sits on a scale somewhere between abstraction and representation. Finding that point of balance fascinates me and when it succeeds I think the work holds a certain tension and ambiguity within it. As Cezanne put it, “painting from nature is not copying the object, it is realising one’s sensations”.
Working in oil and mixed media, I am interested in layers and transparency. What’s seen and not seen. The transience, beauty and fragility of things.
Selected Exhibitions
Solo
2024, Coningsby Gallery W1
2019, Gallery 54, London W1
2017, Gallery 54, London W1
2015, Gallery 54, London W1
2012, Gallery 54, London W1
2010, Gallery 54, London W1
2008, Penhaven Gallery, St Ives, Cornwall
2006, Penhaven Gallery, St Ives, Cornwall
Mixed
2022, The Female Gaze, Robert Eagle Fine Art
2020, Mall Galleries, Art for Youth
2018, Belgrave Gallery, St Ives, Summer Exhibition
2017, Belgrave Gallery, St Ives, Summer Exhibition
2016, Artichoke Gallery, Sussex, ‘Summer Fruits’ & ‘In the Landscape’
2016, Belgrave Gallery, St Ives, Summer Exhibition
2013, Cricket Fine Art, Affordable Art Fair, Battersea
2013, Summer Exhibition, Belgrave Gallery, St Ives
2013, Toronto Art Fair, Jill George Gallery
2012, Jill George Gallery, Art London, Islington
2012, Toronto Art Fair, Jill George Gallery
2011, Summer Waves, Belgrave Gallery, St Ives
2011, Toronto Art Fair, Jill George Gallery
2010, Salmagundi, Belgrave Gallery, St Ives
2010, September Art Exhibition, Sussex
2009, Brian Sinfield Gallery, Burford
2008, September Art Exhibition, Sussex
2008, Kent & Sussex Art Fair
2006, Russell Gallery, London
2006, RWS, Bankside Gallery, London
2006, Royal College of Art, Works on Paper, London
2004/2006, Russell Gallery, London
2004/2006, Merriscourt Gallery, Oxforshire
2004/2006, Mariners Gallery, St Ives, Cornwall
2003/2013, Affordable Art Fair, London