Nick Warinton
Originally from Somerset in south-west England, I moved to Ireland in 1979 and worked in Dublin until I retired in 2021. I now live in New Ross, Co. Wexford.
After graduating from Art College in the UK in 1977 I worked in several London advertising agencies. In Dublin I was a freelance graphic designer and illustrator before leaving the commercial sector in the 1980s to take a new direction in life, working with disabled and disadvantaged adults.
I returned to photography in 2005 after a gap of over twenty years. I started exhibiting in 2006, and have had three solo exhibitions in the Dublin City Library and Archive. I have sold images in Ireland, the UK, the US and France. I have also had an image used by Cambridge University Press as a cover for an academic textbook on environmental issues.
My photography is often the basis for my paintings. They capture a moment in time that reflect a fascination with texture and light. My landscape paintings attempt to go beyond the visual, to evoke the memory of wind and rain on my skin as I walk the landscape, to start where the photography ends. Pencil and charcoal are second nature to me, but oils are now my medium of choice as I can drag and scour and wipe clean; the only constant is change.
The intimate relationship the Irish have with the land is in their history, and my story is often with coastlines and the sea. Broad vistas always inspire me but when I look into detail I search for worlds within worlds, somewhat like our place in the universe.
I feel a sense of human incursion in the natural world. I don’t always avoid a human content in my work, but in my landscapes it is insignificant or non existent: forces greater than our egos are at play here. We will not last, but something of us might.