Tell me about yourself. Describe your journey to becoming an artist.

For as long as I can remember, there was always paper and something to draw with around the house as a child. My mother was always interested in art, but didn’t get the chance to pursue it as a career, but she always made sure I had the freedom to create. Although I never went to art galleries as a child, my holidays where filled with trips to the many stately homes of the uk, due to my mothers love of history. When it was time to choose my subjects for GSCE, I wanted to choose geography over art as a thought I wanted to become a history teacher, this was the point where my mother put her foot down and told me I had to do art because I loved creating - I obliged although irritated at the time. After a few weeks in class, the art teacher approached me and asked if I would like to work on my art at break times, I immediately said yes, as this was a chance for me to escape a lot of bullying, I enjoyed those quiet moments and little chats with the art teacher. I began to learn about artists and to how to create art and gained a confidence I had never experienced before. After A-levels, I started a BA in Art and design, spending my first year in fine Art, 3D design and Textiles. By the end of that year, I specialised in 3D design predominantly influenced by my better grades in that subject and the chance of getting a job. It was only after completing a Master’s in design and subsequently suffering a breakdown, that I realised what I really wanted to do with my life and that was to become an artist.

What initially sparked your interest in painting/drawing the urban environment? Why are you so fascinated by Psychogeography?

I saw an advert for the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour and decided to enter their annual exhibition, to my surprise I got a work accepted; a still life of exotic fruit, and it won me the Winsor and Newton Young Artist Award. It was during the trip to the preview that I stopped by to visit the Tate Britain and entered an exhibition of William Hogarth’s work. The paintings were full of people and life, this fascinated me. Later during the same trip, I visited Borough Market, and it was whilst standing in the middle of the market I thought its just like a modern-day Hogarth scene, why don’t I start to depict this.

Psychogeography has become almost integral to my work. When you look at a scene within any city, you begin to notice little hints to the place's past, an old street sign, a worn doorknob or step showing years of use. By researching the past of a street you can get an idea of its history and the past inhabitance and how the activity they were engaged in has influenced the present, for example, there is a park in Bermondsey, London that started off as a burial ground, and is now a playground, from rest to play, yet it still is an open space within the congested urban environment. Or for instance The Shambles in York, built purposely as a street for butchers to ply their trade, one which relied on the butcher’s ability of create a display and entice people to buy, is now filled with shops trying to create an interesting atmosphere to drawn in people and still make the person walking down the street part with their money, history repeats itself, influencing the way we interact with the urban environment.

Since starting your career, how have the landscapes changed? What impact did covid have on your work?

At first, I began painting landscapes, as I thought art needed to be inspired by what is immediately around you, and living in rural East Yorkshire, there is a constant presence of beautiful landscapes. After seeing the Hogarth Exhibition, I began paying more attention to how people interacted with the urban environment. When covid hit and no one was allowed out, I experienced a major artistic block, and found it very hard to create anything. When the government told us we could go out, to me it seemed there was still a lot of hesitation and reluctance from people in wanting to gather and the urban environment remained quite empty. After a while I began to see how the individual started to interact within cities and with each other again.

Thinking about the last piece you created, describe your creative process from start to finish.

There’s three parts to my creative process. Firstly, I will travel to a city, usually early in the day as I like to watch commuters going to work. Then you get the people popping in to do some shopping, kids going to college and street cleaners trying to keep on top of all the daily mess. I wander around the city with my camera, taking photos of anything I find interesting, walking down the back streets and through alleyways looking for interesting scenes; the untidy back of a shop, the queue for lunchtime sandwiches or the bustle of shoppers and stall holders in a market. By the end of the day you get commuters lined up at the bus stop, tired and ready for home, the city empties and becomes void of people, that creates a sort of apocalyptic environment. Another day I download all the images to my computer and look through them, cropping and printing anything I think could potentially become an interesting painting. I then collate them into folders based on subject matter. I treat my folders of photos as a sketch book, looking through them for the image for my next painting. Finally, I grid up the photo and draw a grid on the painting surface as reference for a detailed drawing of the scene, only then will I begin to start painting, methodically until fully coloured in, then I spray varnish. A painting day starts around 7 o’clock in the morning and finishes around 10 o’clock at night or when I start seeing double!

What are the characteristics of your work? Describe your artistic vision.

A celebration of the ordinary, social realism, documenting how the everyday in life can be interesting and finding the humanity within the urban environment are all characteristics of my work. With structures and streets it is the history of the site, what was there, how it's been used and the life of the buildings within the land, and the relationship of its past to the environment now.

What do you look for in a potential subject to capture? What are the elements of an interesting scene to paint?

The scene must catch my eye. It might be a building that’s seen better days, a single person or a group of people in the environment, their facial expressions, what they are wearing or how they interact with each other or the surrounding area. I tend to look for the humour in life, for instance a well-placed sign in the street, a lady drinking a coffee with a look of exhaustion on her face, or two men having an argument, the hap hazard dumping of rubbish in the street.

What are you currently working on in your studio?

I have been trying to push myself a bit and have created a series of miniature paintings, much smaller that I usually work, still life, people, but not conventionally pretty, a guy eating a McDonald’s, the still life of a dummy and can of coke dumped on the corner of a building, and a mobile style shot of a big full english breakfast.

If you could ask a question to any artist; dead or alive, who would it be, and why?

I would ask William Hogarth what he thinks about photography, and would it be a tool he’d utilise in recording people for his work later in the studio as some artists look down on artists you use photographs as reference material.

Why do you think art is important in society?

The arts in general have been devalued for decades, and unfortunately there still is a class divide, without funded art projects, state schools cannot engage with art to the same degree that private schools can. You can sit any big museum or gallery and observe the school groups, most you find will be from affluent areas. All children need to be shown in school how art can enrich anyone’s lives, not just the people who work within the industry because sadly unless you have parents who have exposed you to the experience of visiting galleries and looking at art, it can be seen as a distant and foreign experience. At the moment we cannot rely on basic education to show students that art can be a career path and a way of life, or simply just an element of pleasure within daily life. The appreciation and participation in art is essential tool for life, just as reading, writing and adding up is.

https://www.elizabethnast.co.uk/

ARTIST INTERVIEW: ELIZABETH NAST