James Nunn

  

Artist's Statement

I make oversized linocut prints and large-scale charcoal and pastel drawings inspired often by the animal kingdom. While the work celebrates the natural world, it is not primarily concerned with wildlife in a descriptive sense. The animals act as an armature for the drawing: a recognisable structure within which marks, textures and forms can develop. They are a starting point rather than a destination. As the work progresses through drawing, carving and printing, observation gives way to instinct, and the image often moves beyond the natural world from which it began. As such, the subjects may appear naturalistic in some works and almost totemic in others.

Drawing lies at the heart of my practice. Whether working in charcoal, ink or linocut, I am interested in the physical act of making marks and the energy they can carry. My work often begins without a fixed destination. Through drawing, carving and printing, an image gradually emerges, discovered as much as designed.

Although linocut is often regarded as a reproductive medium, my approach is closer to drawing. I make only the roughest sketch on the block before I begin cutting, allowing the image to develop directly through the movement of the tools. Much of the final work is therefore not predetermined but found in the act of carving itself. In this sense, the cutting tools become drawing tools, and the finished image retains a visible record of its own making.

Many of my works are unusually large for their medium. Drawing directly onto large sheets of paper and hand-printing oversized linocuts allows me to work with the whole body rather than simply the hand. The resulting images retain something of that physical encounter: energetic, immediate and often monumental.

The printing process itself forms an important part of the work. My largest linocuts are printed entirely by hand rather than with a mechanical press. The transfer of ink becomes a prolonged physical interaction between artist, block and paper, requiring pressure, repetition and patience. Unlike a press, which applies uniform force across the surface, hand-printing introduces subtle variations and traces of effort that become embedded within the image. The final print is therefore not simply an impression of the block, but the product of two acts of drawing: one in the carving and another in the printing.

My work is driven by an interest in the point where observation becomes symbol. I often think of it as somewhere prehistoric cave painting and Magritte's The Treachery of Images: an animal can never simply be an animal once it has been translated into a drawing or a print. While rooted in the forms of the natural world, my work is ultimately about transformation – the human impulse to celebrate, remember and reinterpret nature through making. The physical processes of drawing, carving and printing are left deliberately visible, so that the act of making remains part of the finished image.

Biography

I am a self-taught British artist, born in Bradford, Yorkshire in 1973. My work sells all over the world and I regularly exhibit in London and my home city of Bath. I studied English and American Literature and then went on to gain a Masters degree in the Writing and Transmission of Contemporary Poetry (both at the University of Manchester). A career in book publishing followed but my more natural instinct to communicate visually drew me to the graphic side of the industry and I became a book designer and illustrator. I have designed and illustrated thousands of books and for the last 15 years I have combined this with my own practice as a fine artist. The two disciplines inform and nourish each other. My art helps my illustration avoid cliché and conformity, while my illustration lends themes and forms to my fine art and often the mistakes and experiments from illustrations will form the basis for new standalone work.