Locked Down and Dirty
One of the good things about lockdown this year has been reducing the commute between me and my Unison pastels.
Nigel Smith
Unison Colour Associate Artist
Unison Colour welcomes Nigel Smith as an Associate Artist
Nigel describes himself as an artistic hack trying desperately to become an outsider artist. With a less than traditional or trained style he started painting as a form of therapy.
As a lifelong sufferer of anxiety and panic attacks he found that doodling and scribbling helped him focus attention and reduced his anxiousness during his day job in public health.
His family started to encourage him to develop and from doodling he began experimenting with different mediums until he landed on pastels. Fast forward a couple of years and under the umbrella Hope & Mania, Nigel produces canvases and t- shirts with 20% of any profit he makes going to Papyrus the young person’s suicide prevention charity.
His work tends to focus on less than cheery subjects but that in itself is extremely cathartic. His work has been published in a couple of outsider artist zines and was recently featured in Tales of Lockdown a project publishing peoples personal experiences of war, forced migration and epidemics.
He lives with his wife, three children, two dogs and three chickens in rural Leicestershire.
Blog posts relating to Nigel Smith
Announcing More New Associate Artists
We can now announce our second group of new Associate Artists to Unison Colour. Our Associate Artists perform a fantastic role for Unison Colour and we are proud to welcome the following people…
Chunky, and a bit crumbly
Nigel Smith’s story begins as a child, but it’s not until his 40s, when spurred on by family members at a time dealing with grief and mental health problems, that he puts his art in to action.