After years of living abroad, Nicola Mosley now resides in Cornwall. Mosley has lived in Hong Kong, Paris and Texas but her love of the coastline has played a fundamental role in her art and life. This appreciation is abundantly evident as we look across her works. Their simplicity is void of similarity, each piece has it’s own character and mood.
Mosley’s power of observation enables a concise approach with complimentary tones interrupted by bright streaks of light and desolate landscapes broken up by dark bands of land. The vast skies in thick milky brushstrokes are met with rich earthy tones of earth and sea to create poetic scenes of Cornwall. The emotive quality to Mosley’s work is palpable.
“Predominantly a painter of the coast I am constantly drawn to the horizon, where the sea meets sky or where sea meets land, and by the special qualities of light and elemental weather, particularly of the wild and beautiful Cornish coastline where I live. In my painting I like ambiguity of spaces, the way planes appear and disappear, not really fully defined but suggested by a subtle detail or a gesture of the paint, this is at the heart of my practice.
Reducing the landscape to subtle, minimal forms, I would like the viewer to see an abstracted essence of land and sea. My process is one of using multiple layers of oil glazes to achieve depth of light and colour, while using the palette knife for added texture and definition. Painting for me is a contemplation of a place, frequently returning to the same location to paint.” Nicola Mosley