James Nares

Professions :

Born :

1953

I remind myself that traveling through life as an artist requires one to distill things slowly. To be inquisitive, inventive, and patient - a lot of things get discarded along the way. It's a little like boiling sea water to get at the salt.

artist sea water

I like routine. It enables me to improvise. by James Nares

I like routine. It enables me to improvise.

Music has always been important to me. Rhythm, in particular, features in most of the things I do. I stumbled recently upon an old notebook in which I'd written, 'Touch, timing and timbre... keys to the heart.' That just about says it all.

notebook keys heart

My brushes, my cameras, and my willingness to use them. by James Nares

My brushes, my cameras, and my willingness to use them.

brushes cameras use

My paintings have an ongoing dialogue with photography. There are many painters who would say the same, I'm sure. The difference is that I'm thinking more about the temporal aspect of photography, rather than the visual.

differences photography thinking

I don't have a favorite place to see art. I like to encounter it anywhere, museum, gallery, home, studio, street... I do prefer to see good art, when I see art, but it doesn't matter where I see it.

home museums art

What really interests me about capturing and suspending movement is that I get to experience something invisible and inaudible, as elusive and fleeting as thought itself, and give it form... Maybe my paintings are all just little fragments of the Cosmic Dance suspended in time.

fleeting movement giving

It's true, I do sometimes suspend myself over the canvas, but mostly I work at a table when I'm making a painting. When I use 'The Rig,' my feet are firmly anchored. I lower myself horizontally just long enough to make a brush stroke - a matter of seconds - and then I'm upright again. My assistant then erases the painting quickly with a squeegee and I go for it again... until I get it right. It's like trying to hit a home run.

feet home running

I do make my own brushes and have done so for many years. I'm constantly refining the designs, trying new materials, re-configuring other brushes - all in my never-ending quest for the perfect brush.

design perfect years

The real joy is in discovering that the twigs and branches of my practice are all firmly rooted in a single tree, even as time goes by and I become increasingly aware of the fleetingness of all things.

real practice tree

Well, this week's peeve might be... when art writers talk about an artist's 'efforts,' meaning their work. It always sounds patronizing to me, like 'I'll give you an E for effort.' How about the artist's 'effortlessnesses' instead? It's certainly something, or at least the appearance of something, that I aspire to myself.

effort giving art

I was pretty impressed during the opening of one of my shows, when the five-year-old daughter of a well-known movie actress took a running jump at one of my paintings, like she was diving into a swimming pool. I preferred to treat her impulse as a compliment rather than insult. Sadly she hurt herself more than the painting.

daughter hurt running

It's a fine balance between design and the thing making itself happen. The stroke has to have complete precision to work. Sometimes I lose it on the exit. You can't fudge it. It ruins the whole thing.” The resulting figures are almost always contained within the rectangle. “It's less of a window if I keep it within the confines of the canvas, but there's almost always a drip that's an umbilical cord.

umbilical-cord balance design

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