Nick Dawes

Art Brokerage: Nick Dawes British Artist: b. 1969. Dawes combines his interests in High Modernism and 1950s abstract painting in this new series of work. Building on these references, and using an expanded version of watercolor painting, Dawes builds the forms in his work through a series of poured layers that penetrate, diffuse, and run - generating a translucent visual dynamic where solid components dissolve and flow into a vocabulary of fluid entities. Once he has an idea of where the work begins, he starts with small sketches and drawings based on a single word - and as he begins his process the work goes on a journey of transformation, where the starting point of the work and where it ends up are almost unrecognizable. Using the scale of his body, and the canvas itself as a tool, Dawes shapes the forms on his canvases into dynamic and mysterious shapes that seem to surround and encompass the viewer. In this new series, Dawes challenges himself formally - introducing a new, Baroque-influenced color palette, and keeping the paint application a bit thinner - maintaining the idea of transparency at the forefront of the work. Dawes considers his practice just one large body of work - each piece building on its predecessor, adding something new or taking something away, and offering new sensibilities of experimentation with each new painting. In works like Level, leaning on the legacies of post-war abstract expressionist painters such as Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler, Dawes welcomes a relaxed playfulness as the shapes dynamically move towards each other and towards us. Listings wanted.