born…Scotland
current location…Hamburg, Germany
As a native of Scotland, Nicola Watson holds a deep emotional connection with the landscape there. She carries the memories of these restless terrains with her, translating the sensation of space and light into her drawings. They furnish the substance of her work.
With the focus on abstracting elements of the sky and the evolving tones of cloud formations, she attempts to capture that visceral sense of place. The drawings often start from a point of chaos, graphite or pastel are ground into the paper in an almost aggressive manner, the physicality of which allows instinct to shape the initial image.
A range of evocative atmospheres begin to form and a semblance of sense arises from the chaos, it’s at this point the painstaking process of drawing really begins, where deleting marks are as important as adding. Over a lengthy period of time the subject matter is scrutinised and amplified in order to capture that essence.
This detailed and intricate mark making is a complete contradiction to the transient subject matter, it has become an obsession that sometimes leads to a sense of dislocation rather than connection with the country she grew up in. But it is this contradiction that allows for the exploration of these evolving landscapes and memories.
It is a constant process of evaluation and improvisation.