Interview with Niall Naessens

Описание: Welcome to Graphic Studio Gallery Interview series; this time, in conversation with our current featured artist, Niall Naessens. He reflects on the lockdown, the landscape as his continuous subject matter, 'events' that he depicts and protagonists who started entering his compositions lately. This video contains a video footage following the artist on a 2 km walk from his home, recorded by Nicholas Naessens.

See our Featured Artist page for more about Niall and his work.

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Niall Naessens was born in Dublin in 1961 and currently lives in Lios na Caolbhaí, Brandon in West Kerry. He graduated from the NCAD, in Visual Communications in 1983. He has long history with Graphic Studio Dublin, having first engaged with printmaking here, in 1990, and serving on the board from 2001 to 2006. He is a current member of the studio. In 2004 he set up Cló Cill Rialaig, an etching workshop in Ballinskelligs and was master printmaker there until 2009. Naessens returned to NCAD graduating with an MFA in Fine Art Print in 2013.

Naessens’ most recent solo show was Good Morning Mister Turner, Niall Naessens and J.M.W. Turner at the National Gallery of Ireland 2018. Naessens showed etchings and drawings inspired by Turner alongside the Henry Vaughan Bequest Tuner watercolours. Good Morning Mister Turner also showed at Siamsa Tire Tralee, 2018.

His work is in many collections including the Bank of Ireland, the Contemporary Art Society of Ireland, Chester Beatty Library, National Gallery of Ireland, Northern Bank, Office of Public Works, Hilton Hotel and Dublin City University. He has been commissioned by University College Dublin, Dublin Port and the Department of Foreign Affairs amongst others.

‘My work focuses on light and space. The way I construct an image is deliberate and pedantic the composition and mark making thought out. I use rules and stencils and I draw formal hatching. I layer my drawings, making an image out of several independent procedures. My landscapes are square, making them intimate. While I pay heed to tradition, my take on landscape is not traditional. I hide things behind distractions interference and motifs.

Recently I have introduced figures into my work. This started off while making work for my 2018 Good Morning Mister Turner show where an artist featured in many works. It was unclear whether the artist was myself or Turner but the presence changed the dynamic of the work. It opened new dialogues with the viewer and suggested narratives.

I make pictures that are familiar yet not real, a magic realism. I see my images as backdrops to events; maybe a gust of wind or an artist observing dawn. Although I live in a remote and beautiful landscape and the idea of merely ‘capturing’ does not interest me anymore. I am looking closer and trying to portray the life of an artist and his ideas through the vehicle of landscape. I want the viewers to look, think and wonder as I do. The sentiment in my work is about the physical nature of being in a place

I make 3 and 4 plate colour etchings involving hard and soft grounds, aquatint, sugarlift, spitbititng, engraving, burnishing and erasing. My drawings are graphite printed over with flat ares of translucent etching ink and gouache. I employ my own particular drawing syntax which I have developed by moving between the two mediums. I capitalise on the limitations of a medium, finding in restrictions the freedom to create voice’. Niall Naessens