Living in the British Outback: Cozy Pictures of the Beauty of Countryside Life

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Melancholic girls walking dogs against the backdrop of harsh nature, gray-haired ladies talking on the seashore, eternal autumn with its gifts, quiet gatherings in the kitchen, the comfort of rural life … Dee Nickerson's slightly naive drawings are adored in Great Britain and beyond. However, having started to paint in early childhood, the artist was embarrassed for many years to show her creativity to the world.

The artist was born in 1957 to a family of farmers near Wymondham, Norfolk. In her youth, she found rural everyday life boring, and therefore ran away from the dull reality to study the fine arts. From the age of three, she loved to look at colorful albums with reproductions and very early she began to paint herself. The family only supported her interest in painting. And Dee liked that her drawings made people happy. Now this is her creative credo: "Art should bring people happiness!"

When Dee was in art school, she was worried about the lack of her own painting style. After all, all the artists she liked had this elusive style, uniqueness, recognizable handwriting! But she could not find her way. However, her teacher, when asked about the search for a style, answered: “But you already have it - you just need to work on it!”. Nickerson followed his advice and is not going to stop there, improving her writing style year after year. For some time she worked in the Liberty chain of stores, selling very aesthetic household items, textiles, and decorative elements. This seemingly surprisingly mundane work has become an inexhaustible source of visual experience for Dee. Every day she was surrounded by beautiful things, unusual prints and patterns, complex shapes, exquisite textures … They all asked - draw me, draw!

However, at first, Dee Nickerson did not feel the strength and confidence to start a career in the field of art. And one day - then Dee was already over forty - her best friend convinced the artist to take a couple of works to the nearest gallery selling paintings and sculptures. And … her drawings attracted the attention of many buyers! So Dee Nickerson got the opportunity to quit her job and do only art. The growth of the artist's popularity came at the end of the 2000s, when her works began to be actively sold via the Internet. She has a huge fan base across the UK and beyond, and those who can't afford the original are happy to buy Dee's postcards and calendars.

All her works are autobiographical in one way or another. Women, animals and nature - this is the plot of each of them. Like the ancient goddesses, the guardians of these places, dressed in stylish skirts and coats on occasion, they march past ghostly tree trunks, past raging sea waves, past hills and villages - pensive, serene. And they are accompanied by faithful familiars who know about life, of course, more than people. Most often these are cats, for which everything is allowed in the artist's paintings, and birds invariably soar in the sky. Sometimes male figures appear in the works of Dee Nickerson, but they are just random companions, silent witnesses, guests in these cozy female worlds. The heroines of the artist's works do not show off, do not try to please the viewer. Their faces are focused, their hair is often gray and disheveled (and sometimes turns into tree branches), their clothes hide the outlines of their bodies, their hands are hidden in their pockets - but this is why it is so easy for every woman to identify with them.

Dee portrays his usual household routine in such a way that he wants to go to the heroines for tea and stay forever. Unhurried cooking, rustling of book pages, ringing of knitting needles and all the same quiet cat's purr - this is what life is filled with in her paintings. Each interior is not a sketch from nature, but the fruit of her rich imagination, based on an equally rich experience of perceiving beautiful things. And outside the window - falling leaves or snow, all the same groves and hills …

Dee Nickerson's paintings rarely begin with preliminary sketches and sketches. Usually she spontaneously begins to apply paint on thick paper or wood, starting with abstract lines and spots, and gradually concretizes the image, adds details, complicates the images. The work lasts until the artist intuitively feels that it can be completed - and the essence is not so much in the feeling of satisfaction as in the thought "neither subtract nor add." Most often, Dee uses acrylic, which gives an especially bright color and an even finish, but sometimes he prefers watercolors or pastels.

What inspires Dee? All around! Nature and pets, chance encounters, movies and books, fashion and interiors, travels and conversations, childhood memories, fragments of music …

“I am easily influenced, I always wander, look and get carried away,” says the artist. And, of course, the list of her favorite artists is endless - there are Holbein, Bruegel, Matisse, and many modern creators, famous and not so famous. Art critics note the similarity with the ornamentation and rhythm of the works of the representatives of the "Arts and Crafts Movement" and the unequivocal influence of naive painting, including icon painting and retablo. However, Dee Nickerson has a professional art education, which does not allow her to be classified as naive art - rather, they can be attributed to a modern interpretation of primitivism.

Her fans will learn about Dee's life from Instagram - her passion for digital technologies has not passed her either. There you can enjoy the artist's new works, fragments of paintings and workflow, read her small notes about the creation of each of the works and good wishes to everyone who came to admire her account.

Dee Nickerson, despite her popularity, chose a quiet country life "away from the maddened crowd." Every day she goes on a bike ride through the nearby groves and hills, plays with her dogs, observes the world … And this is precisely the secret of the amazing precision, comfort and charm of her work.