Interview by Jimon

1-Where did you grow up, and where do you live currently?  I was born and raised in the suburbs of London. I lived in Barcelona for most of my twenties, subsequently Ghent and back to London (Archway) where I’ve been living for the last decade.

2-How would you describe Nick Offer?   Nice fella, bit up himself.

3-Did you have any official training for art?   Yes, Edinburgh College of Art (BA Painting) and Winchester School of Art (MA European Fine Art).

4-How long have you been making art and what lead you to start?   I decided to be an artist when I was sixteen on the basis that it was what I seemed to do best. I’ve been ‘making art’ since that point I suppose.

5-What is the source behind your paintings, where do they come from?   The classic approach: take a pail to fetid swamp of psyche, dunk it in and see what gets dredged up.  The particular process I use for this is collage. I combine and recombine random images which engage me until they resonate in a certain way. The results, give or take formal  tweaking, compositional adjustments etc. – represent a fairly direct line to one’s subconscious. Mind you, I’m not an expert in these things.

6-The future is _________.   Murder.

7-What advice would you give putative collectors?   Trust your instinct, unless you have shit instinct.

8-How did you acquire your style?   Trial and error. But if there’s such a thing as style it should be transient and certainly not an end in itself. Actually I’ve never thought in terms of style.

9-Have you ever come across a piece of art that you could not or did not want to stop looking at?   Certainly:  Bacon’s ‘3 Studies for a Crucifixion’, Velaquez’s ‘A Dwarf Holding a Tome on His Lap’, Rembrandt’s ‘Portrait of Margaretha de Geer’, Constable’s ‘Haywain’, Gericault’s ‘Portrait of a Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy’ amongst many other equally obvious ones!

10-What influences you as an artist?  Other artists. Not necessarily just visual ones. Example; the albums Tom Waits made in the late 70s evoke worlds aurally which I would love to create visually. He often uses ‘found’ instruments to create odd and compelling sounds that convey better than ‘conventional’ instruments the essence of the song. I would like to try and do something similar by combining abstraction with collage, stencil, screen-printed photos, spray paint to create convincing self contained worlds.  Cinema is very important too. I would love to convey the melancholy and violence of Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garret and Billy the Kid’ in a painting. Still working on that one.

11-What kinds of art hang on the walls of your home?   My children’s.

12-How do you describe success as an artist?   I suppose there are 3 categories – how you rate yourself, how your peers rate you and how the market rates you. Of the 3 I think how your peers rate you is the most objective and therefore the best gauge of success.

13-Do you have a place/person/thing that you visit for inspiration?   No.

14-Name three things you can’t live without in your studio?   Coffee, noise reducing headphones, Miles Davis in his mid 70s voodoo period.

15-If you could have dinner with 3 artists living/dead who would be at your table?   Bacon, Velazquez, Crumb.

16-How would someone find you on social media?   Instagram: nick_offer