Thinking About Painting
- Studio Nicola Fouché
- Apr 29
- 5 min read
April 2025
Dear friends, family and collectors,
**Before embarking on my meanderings for April, I would like to announce that I will be holding an online Studio Sale at the End of May. The catalogue will be available for viewing and download on Google Drive later this month. The sale will consist of older work of mine, and will be heavily discounted. Once the catalogue has been uploaded I will send out an email to each of you.**
April was, intentionally this time, a slower month. I devoted time to thinking and writing about my practice. I took the time to lie down on my back, to come home to my body and do deep relaxations from the Plum Village app. I gave myself permission to do less each day. A practice which is actually so simple, but incredibly challenging.
In August of this year I will be a full-time practicing artist for 3 years. As with any relationship or venture worth doing, the first few years is all thrill and excitement. Everything is new, leaps of faith abound, and the challenges are par for the course. As time progresses and your relationship slowly begins to mature, an element of intentionality begins to play a larger role. The slow shift from infatuation to a more enduring, but simultaneously gruelling, love has begun. My relationship with my art practice has crossed this threshold. I can feel that the urgency to do, create and become everything right now is beginning to abate. In it's place an older, slower energy is growing. One that keeps reminding me that my practice is a journey and that I have my whole life (however long has been granted me) to grow into my practice. It also tells me that I may slow down and grant myself the space and time needed for my practice to ripen. Which is a sentiment I have been practising with, for myself as a person, as well.
Of course it does bring with it new challenges as well, mostly of an internal nature. In order for something to ripen, to unfold in it's own time, it needs two very precious ingredients: time and patience (the latter of which I am terrible at, I will add). Both are also elements, which in our modern world, we forever seem to be lacking or out of or pressed for or needing to manage (better or worse depending on your situation). I can feel this same obsession with time within myself, it plays out as an internal war between being productive and enough. Or put simply, doing and being. As a result, I catch myself at times trying to rush my work to some sort of easily-spoken-about conclusion. This is then when I practice slowing down. I pause, I breathe and I shift my must-do-more energy to something where I will not cause unnecessary harm (doodles are great for that).
The gift and the curse of the artist, or any sensitive being for that matter, is that you are able to witness these paradoxical energies rage and war within you. But seeing is not enough, you have to learn the painful skill of taking care of these energies as well. I used to believe that freedom was no longer experiencing certain emotions, like a mountain that has been climbed and conquered. I have since learned, through great suffering, that this was an incorrect view to hold. Emotions cannot be conquered or slain, they can only be cared for. And there is no other way to do that than to invite them in whenever they arrive, to create space for them, to speak to them gently and with kindness, even though their presence might be unwelcome and disruptive. This requires time and patience, it asks of you to stop doing and to start being.
During the past month, the majority of the time that I spent writing about my practice was focused on refining and also re-defining my artist's statement. It is a key piece of writing needed for any residency, art prize, magazine feature submission and so forth. And, I have found, that it is an incredibly difficult paragraph (or two) to write, particularly because I want it to be an honest reflection of where I am in my practice and what I am working towards in my studio. I also, more importantly, want it to be straightforward and simple. There are few things that irritate me more than artist's statements heavily draped in contemporary, art-world jargon and trendy catch-phrases but are empty of any real meaning.
And so, with trepidation, shyness and a tiny dollop of pride, I invite you to read my current artist's statement (something which will hopefully always be in a state of becoming):
"Nicola Fouche's art practise is in large part an expression of and a response to her personal experience of life and what it means to be human. She is fascinated by the vast internal worlds which each of us carry within, and positions her artistic practise as a way to explore her own. As someone who feels emotions strongly and sometimes struggles with anxiety, her studio and creative work give her a sense of stability and peace. It serves as a refuge, creating a steady base from which to weather the storms, process the world in which she lives and gain a deeper understanding of her own internal landscape.
She has always been drawn to the directness of expression which both painting and drawing offers. As a starting point she enjoys working quickly and automatically, allowing line, colour and her internal weather pattern to serve as guides. Once the chaos has been captured, she assumes the role of mediator and cartographer. Like a mapmaker she carefully traces the contours and imprints of the marks and shapes. She sees this process as a way to make her otherwise-invisible inner world visible, using paint and mark-making as a kind of emotional language.
She aims to create depth and a feeling of dynamic movement within her work. An ongoing exploration of colour, gesture and line are therefore seminal to her practice. These aspects of her work serve as metaphors for her own emotive understanding of and grappling with life: colourful, nuanced, varied and invariably abstract in nature."
My wish is that as my practice ripens and matures, I will find the words to speak with ever greater clarity and simplicity about this deeply complex and nuanced process of art-making.
May you find the time to slow down, do less and be more.
With all my love,
Nicola
PS. As always, if you enjoyed my musings and know of anyone who might also enjoy my ramblings please forward my blog to them, your support will be greatly appreciated. I would also love to hear from you. So any responses or comments or creative stories of your own that you might have and would like to share with me, please reach out!
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