The Jetty Gallery
Nick Potter
"I am often asked what art means to me. The answer is; a lot of different things. It is firstly a job, it is how I make my living. That can sometimes make a difference to my approach. There is obviously a creative process, a development of ideas which can be influenced by all sorts of factors such as tradition, upbringing, opportunity and environment. It can also be a lonely journey. I work alone in my studio, daily, for hours. Speaking to no one, my sanity maintained by listening to audio books, I cannot paint without their comforting background noise.
I have been painting for a long time, forty plus years. My approach is changing. I do have a low boredom threshold and I am sometimes criticised for changing my style too often. However I am not a painter who can continually paint in the same way or in the same style. Picasso famously said 'you must learn all the rules so that you know how to break them'.
I now enjoy breaking the rules. I love to experiment with style and techniques and also with media. This new work is mainly in mixed media using acrylic, acrylic inks, oil pastel and particularly collage. Collage creates interesting patterns, textures and surfaces and adds little points of interest. I am also experimenting with colour. I hope the brighter colour palette creates a feeling of goodwill and happiness in the viewer, and what is wrong with that? I also hope the pictures stimulate the imagination as I move from representation towards colour and abstraction (for now anyway)."