Nathan Walsh is a British artist renowned for his large-scale paintings that explore the urban landscape. His recent works uniquely blend interior, exterior, and reflected spaces, creating an amalgam of diverse locations and viewpoints. Characterized by a meticulous investigative approach to drawing, perspective, and color theory, Walsh’s paintings possess a hallucinatory quality, existing in transitional worlds that challenge our perception of reality. While rooted in realism, they present spaces that are both cogent and persuasive. With two decades of international exhibitions under his belt, including notable solo shows in New York, London, and Zurich, Walsh’s next exhibition is set to open this November at Friedrich Pontone Gallery in NYC. His work has garnered attention in numerous print and digital publications, such as The Times, Huffington Post, Whitehot Magazine, and La Repubblica, as well as TV features on ABC, NBC, and Canal TV.

So glad you could join us, Nathan! How’s it going?

Thanks for reaching out. All is well here in Wales, but it’s beginning to get cold in the studio! I live and work in a very old church that requires a lot of heating. The paintings take longer to dry this time of year, which always slows down my plans a little.

As an artist, your background must play a role in your creative vision. What aspects of your life have had the most profound impact on your work?

I would say looking and seeing other people's work has had the greatest influence on my practice. This might involve visiting galleries or museums in person or looking at paintings in reproduction. I don’t travel as much as I’d like due to the labor-intensive nature of making my paintings, but when I do, I like to spend as much time as possible getting up close to paintings and drawings. As an extension of this, my dialogue with other artists has been critically important and supportive as the years have gone by.

‘Metaphores’ | oil on linen | 122 x 159 cm

Can you walk us through your creative process? How do you transform your initial sketches and photographs into such intricate and immersive paintings?

This tends to change from painting to painting, but in most cases I will make small prints of the drawings and photographs I’ve taken of a particular location, then spread them out on the studio floor. In recent works, the pool of information I'm exploring has become deeper and deeper. More than one location is likely to be used, often from different viewing angles and times of day. From this point, I will make a series of postcard-sized drawings incorporating elements from the different sources. These crude studies get taped to a large old draftsman’s board, and I live with them for a period of time.

This period of time is important as it allows me to really consider whether an idea is worth pursuing. Even my small paintings take months to make, so it’s critical that I feel a particular idea has the potential to be made into something exciting. If I’m repeating something I’ve done before or it's too close to another artist's work, then it has to be rejected. Also, making work purely for financial gain has never sat well with my psyche.

The next stage is making a larger drawing normally around A2 in size. These are full working drawings, which map out the main elements of a composition. They are full of changes and revision, notes and calculations, which will hopefully help construct a full-scale painting.

This drawing starts again in earnest once I’ve received a stretcher-sized for the painting. Depending on the size and complexity of the idea, this might go on for a number of weeks. I use a box of soft pencils and a pile of erasers, nothing hi-tech or elaborate.

Eventually, I get to the point where I can't progress anymore; I see the linen surface with a tinted oil glaze, and once dry, I start painting. For those people who have seen my work in real life, they will know I employ a variety of techniques and approaches to applying paint, from thin glazes over heavy impastos to areas of wet-into-wet painting. Viewed in reproduction, or worse still, a smartphone screen, all these subtleties and nuances are lost.

Your process is incredibly detailed and complex. What aspects of it do you find most fulfilling and what challenges do you face?

The challenge must always be to up the ante from the work I’ve made previously. I’d hate to think I would be going through the motions and making formulaic paintings. It would be easy to make the same painting again and again, or start to think about potential markets or opportunities, or even pleasing specific collectors. These are all, however, obvious dead ends.

I have a stretcher waiting in my studio that I can’t wait to start, but I know before long I’ll run into difficulties with it. Hopefully, at some point, it will reach some sort of conclusion, and I’ll be satisfied with it. It's a good feeling to fully realize an idea and see it complete in the studio, even if that feeling is often short-lived!

What does a typical day look like for you when you’re in work mode?

I paint 6 days a week and try to put in at least 8 hours a day with a brush or pencil in hand. I used to do more as a younger artist, but at 52, it's just too draining to work crazy hours. I clean my palette around 7:30 AM with the goal of starting work in earnest around 8. I break around midday for something to eat and normally go for a short walk to get some fresh air. I return to the studio and try to keep going until around 5 or 6 PM. I seem to function much better earlier on in the day and make more effective creative decisions.

When you’re out and about in a city, what specific elements or details do you look for that inspire your compositions?

Ten years ago, my work was far more literal in nature. I would have specific ideas in mind and hope for particular weather conditions to carry out drawings and photography. Now my approach is the opposite. I just wander around and experience whatever I come across. I find not having any preconceived ideas about what I might make leads to more exciting and unexpected outcomes. As artists, subject matter is all around us if we let ourselves be open to it.

‘Monarchs Drift’ | oil on linen | 121 x 153 cm

Perspective is such a crucial aspect of your cityscape paintings, shaping not just how we view the structures but also the emotions and narratives within them. How do you see your manipulation of perspective as a tool to evoke specific feelings or experiences in the viewer?

As my work has evolved, my use of perspective has become less prescriptive in nature. I don’t employ any set strategy, nor follow any set rules. Usually, the drawings in particular develop organically. The more recent works (which I would hope are more visually sophisticated) introduce multiple planes and viewpoints that converge within a single picture plane. This, in part, has been an attempt to question boundaries, both conceptual and formal, between interior and exterior, as well as personal and communal. This echoes the complexity and crucial interconnectivity of urban life.

I’m currently working on a drawing based on a busy Paris café, within which I’m looking to take this idea further. The intention is to ask the viewer to consider how individual identities and communal spaces interweave within a modern city. I’m looking forward to seeing how this project plays out.

‘Paper Tiger’ | pencil on paper | 50 x 90 cm

In your opinion, what makes an urban landscape captivating enough to translate into a painting?

I find that quite difficult to answer, or at least, it’s challenging to define it clearly. Ten years ago, on location, I would be thinking about a specific viewpoint or time of day. It was a fairly straightforward process. Now I’m thinking more about what sort of painting I could make, and then looking to find subjects that could align with that idea. The subject is becoming secondary to my initial impulse. More often than not, the starting point could happen in my studio or during a trip to a museum. For example, I’ve been looking a lot recently at the work of Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, wondering if some of their approaches could be utilized to make something very contemporary. Painting has to move forward; I’m always conscious of not paying too much homage to something that’s already been explored in depth.

Which city or place has surprised you the most in terms of inspiration?

I find Paris endlessly surprising and inspiring. However, a recent trip to Vienna has suggested a number of new ideas to explore.

Rue Des Saints’ | oil on linen | 128 x 122 cm

With all the detail in your work, how do you measure success in your art? Is it about getting it technically right, or something more emotional?

I’m naturally drawn to complexity. It seems a straightforward measure to push the paintings forward. If the current painting has ten vanishing points, then why can’t the next one have twenty? And so on... It’s hard to quantify whether I feel more emotionally engaged with one work over another. However, I can get a feeling in my gut whether a painting I’m making is becoming derivative or lazy. Also, if the parameters I set myself are wide-ranging and I don’t really know how a work is going to turn out, then it’s difficult to assess whether a work is successful or not. Everything is an ‘attempt’ at achieving specific goals, and it’s hard to know how close I get. Sometimes looking back at my older works, the flawed but more ambitious works are more satisfying.

‘Hudson Yards’ | oil on linen | 144 x 269 cm

Balancing life in the city while immersing yourself in its landscapes for your art can be overwhelming. What do you do to unwind and find inspiration outside of your work?

My other project is restoring the church I live in. It’s a simple building, but I enjoy trying to improve it room by room. In some ways, it’s become an extension of my studio, with touchstones of references to the artists and designers that have inspired my practice over the years. I often spend Sundays with my wife visiting reclamation yards and antique fairs, looking for objects or building materials to incorporate within it. Last year, I was lucky to acquire a mosaic by one of my favourite artists, the Anglo-Welsh polymath Frank Brangwyn. The mosaic, which explores the theme of youth and old age, now sits where the original church doors were before they were blocked up around a hundred years ago. It was originally commissioned by Tiffany's in NYC for their flagship store, but was rejected for reasons lost to history. I’m sure Brangwyn, who was a deeply religious man, would be happy to know where it eventually ended up.

You mentioned in our correspondence that you have an exhibition coming up in NYC. Can you share a sneak peek of what to expect?

The show I’ve got coming up in NYC will be at Friedrichs Pontone Gallery. The show will feature one very large painting that I’ve been working on for over a year, and a number of supporting working drawings. The painting, entitled ‘NHM,’ is based loosely on visits to the Natural History Museum in London, which started as a 5-year-old boy with my mother. Compositionally, it functions in a non-literal way. Instead of one station point, there are several, which presents a space impossible to experience in real life. The structures of the museum have been redrawn and reconstructed in a way that controls the viewer’s journey through the painting. Although this does echo the cubist experiments of the early 20th century, instead of fracturing the space into abstract form, the intention is to present a new, coherent reality. I want to challenge the viewer to think about how we experience and understand space, not just in literal terms, but through the filtered lenses of art history.

’NHM’| oil on linen | 124 x 224 cm

My paintings always tend to be quite meticulous, but with this one, the challenge has been to combine that precision with a more dreamlike world. This is an imaginary space where subject matter from different sources and time periods can collide and interact. I’m excited to see how the public will react to this work.

Thanks for sharing your journey with us, Nathan! Any last thoughts or reflections you’d like to leave our readers with?

I think fully living a 'visual life' is something I can recommend to everyone!