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A local artist that specialises in hyper-real paintings is celebrating water in its many states – ocean, ice and snow – and using his latest body of work to apologise for the “appalling” way we treat it.
Nick Romeril’s new exhibition is entitled ‘Dear Water’ and can be seen until 19 December at Private & Public.
It features a series of paintings showcasing water in many different forms, from icebergs to snowy mountains and stormy seascapes, that not only feature Nick’s beloved blue but also pinks and oranges.
Video: Nick discusses his latest exhibition.
“There are very bright colours, there are sunsets and just the big stormy seascapes that I have been doing for the past few years,” Nick explained.
“I’m still very keen on them. In fact to be honest, the turmoil that we are going through seems to give them a little bit more punch these days and I think a lot of people can see the future is misty and the current situation is stormy.”
‘Dear Water’ also includes four large works from Nick’s Antarctic series which have never been shown in the island before. It also includes a series of smaller works portraying the Swiss Alps.
Pictured: Nick Romeril has included paintings inspired by his Antarctic residency.
The show aims to celebrate water in all its forms. “I have a deep love for the ocean and water, all forms of water,” the artist said.
“One of the things I find about the sea is that it’s a great way of discarding your anxieties. You can symbolically throw in your anxieties and they just get washed away.
“There is a power in the waves which is kind of bigger, it’s something else. When you look at a really strong wave, you think ‘I’m really glad I’m not in there’. There’s a power, a scariness to them, it’s a bit like the situation we are in at the moment. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Pictured: The artist said he wanted to celebrate water in all its forms.
As Nick explained, ‘Dear Water’ is also meant to be an apology for “the way we treat water."
“It’s my ‘Dear John’ letter,” he said. “It’s me apologising to the way we treat our waters, it’s full of plastic, it’s overused, polluted. We don’t really treat it very nicely and yet without it we are doomed.
“We are quite lucky in Jersey because we have so much water around us and we don’t really have a problem with water. If you think of other places in the world, they have to walk for miles to get enough water to drink for the day and the stuff they drink is not very good.
“I am obviously very keen on the environment, I to do whatever I can to improve people’s understanding of what is going on and so, it is important to me.”
Pictured: Sunsets and bright colours feature next to the stormy seascapes in 'Dear Water'.
While the majority of the paintings were created this year, Nick admitted he struggled to create as a result of the pandemic.
“I found it quite difficult to work at this time. In fact, I couldn’t work,” he explained. “When we first went into lockdown, everyone kept saying ‘oh it’s not done anything different to you’ but I had three or four exhibitions cancelled, I had lots of projects which I was planning to do and none of them happened and I just thought, ‘What’s the point?’
“Since the paintings I create, well I like to say they are beautiful, it was really difficult to make something beautiful during that time because it felt so negative."
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