Richard Nott
Richard Nott was a British artist born in 1963. He lived and worked in west Cornwall.
Nott gained his Fine Art degree at Lancashire Polytechnic and his MA in fine art at Reading University. In 1985 he worked as an assistant to Andy Goldsworthy on site-specific sculptures in the Lake District. He was gallery assistant at the Royal Academy from 1986-7 and at Oldham Art Gallery from 1991-2. He won the South West Arts Visual Arts and Photography Award in 1994.
He gained a residency at the 12th International Weeks of Painting in Slovenia. Exhibitions have been extensive and international notable included numerous solo exhibitions at Anima Mundi over a long and fruitful working relationship, ‘Art Now Cornwall’ at the Tate St Ives, Wall Street Journal, Chashama, Avenue of the America’s, NYC and Koss Gallery, Detroit.
Richard Nott’s paintings are unique.
There are no oil or acrylic paints in his studio, he works with industrial materials, bitumen, emulsions and varnishes, building them up layer upon layer, often over intimately drawn or gouged grids, lines or marks, into a textural palimpsest, before courageously scraping or burning them back to reveal what lies underneath. Viewing Richard Nott’s artwork is witnessing a protracted collision of creative and destructive processes.
An evolution of matter, exposed, concealed, exposed, concealed, continuously. His paintings become the consequence of years spent where Nott’s history merges with the history of the elements used. He has little interest in illusionistic ‘texture’, the work must be its own entity, have its own story and be its own statement. His objective is to create an organic object that evolves like a living thing with truth and imperfection. His process of working allows for a contemplation of a cycle of existence to become imbued into the work. Not a beginning with an end but a journey where genesis leads to dissolution, and on once again to genesis. Something eternal akin to alchemy…
During his six-year battle with Multiple Myeloma, Nott continued working in his studio at Bayhouse, Cornwall. He passed away on 17th August 2025, leaving a collection of work that will be exhibited in due course.
