“This is my first solo exhibition and I can’t think of a more significant location to show my work.”
In 1985, Nick Ivins created what he thought would be a ‘final’ painting — on a found matchbox — in honour of a fellow student who had drowned at Loe Bar, just across Mount’s Bay from Newlyn Art Gallery. He did not paint again for 30 years, until a move in 2015 to a house overlooking the sea reignited his practice.
His paintings are shaped by the meeting point of unstable, landslip-prone shoreline and sea. Ships and Ship-branded matchboxes, threatening waves, and figures bathing all feature in works that explore human fragility alongside the pleasures of a life well-lived. An ongoing body of late-night portrait drawings (made in front of BBC Newsnight) runs in parallel to this practice.
Working both on location and in the studio, Nick uses quick mark-making, over-painting, and reclaimed surfaces such as shipping crates, allowing oil-rich paint to flow with gravity. Drawings and small works made outdoors often form the starting point for larger works back in the studio.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
With a 30-year background in commercial advertising, design, Getty Images stock, and events photography, Nick Ivins has also worked as a photo-shoot location manager, co-authored The New Homesteader (Ryland, Peters & Small, 2016), acted once, driven tractors, and rowed Cornish pilot gigs.
Raised in West Kent, fishing streams and exploring fields, he spent weekends visiting London galleries before studying Foundation Art (1984–85) at Canterbury College of Art under Eric Hurren. He re-established a daily painting practice in 2017, studied with Turps Art School (Correspondence Course, 2022–23), and since 2020 has regularly exhibited in Open Call shows and group exhibitions as part of three artist collectives.
Influences include John Walker’s anti-bucolic Maine paintings, Rose Wylie’s bold figure work, and Fernand Léger’s call for ‘strong‘ art.
Now based in Lyme Regis and working from a studio in the Axminster Carpets factory, Nick will begin an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in September 2025.
