Nick Collerson
Nick Collerson works within a long tradition of philosophy and art that engages in the poetics of meaning and interpretation.
Image credit: Nick Collerson, Socrates’s house 666 Livingstone Rd, 2022, oil on canvas, 152 x 137 cm. Courtesy the artist and PALAS, Sydney © Nick Collerson
Nick Collerson pours us ginger and lemon tea from his orange teapot, a balm against the cold morning. We’re sitting in his studio in Marrickville. A former dairy-cum-SES building is now in its third life as an artist-run studio. In the long hall at the centre of the building are several of Collerson’s larger paintings at different stages of completion – a few have been painted over or rubbed back. These have an edge of mystery around them, like ghostly apparitions that are still deciding whether to stay or move on. Other paintings lean invitingly in stacks.
Collerson likes to let things sit. He works quickly once a decision is made but then allows the work to evolve slowly over months or sometimes years. “I don’t need to know where the paintings are going to go,’ he says. “More often, I like to be surprised.”
“Sometimes, many different interpretations come out of it [a work], so I’m switching between them and looking for different things. I guess the thing that compels me finish a painting is when it’s ambiguous but productive at the same time,” explains Collerson. “And that’s not about trying to avoid meaning, I just think it’s a different orientation towards meaning.”
This productive ambiguity is part of his process and an outcome he actively encourages. He feels a painting is finished when the symbolic content and the composition work together to create a dynamic that invites interpretation. “It feels like something settles in the painting. Like... Subscribe to read all articles in full
