Nathan Ford

Last year I discovered artist Nathan Ford when I went to see the BP Portrait Award at Wolverhampton Art Gallery, in which his piece 'Abi' was featured. 'Abi' was one of my favourite pieces in the whole collection. It was probably the smallest and most 'quiet' image, compared to the other artworks in the exhibition which tended to be louder, more colourful and photographic.  I'm very interested in leaving parts of the image blank, either forgotten parts, or possibly the more personal/subjective parts. I am looking at the idea of shared memory, such as shared events most of us have experienced us in day-to-day life. I am now experimenting with trying to represent these general memories that we all share, by using familiar imagery, and also cutting out details, such as people, so that the image is less personal to one individual's memory, but to all of our's. I really like how the eye is so accurately represented with vivid colours in Ford's piece 'Abi', yet the rest of the portrait fades away to a few sketchy lines, before fading completely away. I am really interested in how this technique can relate to memory, and the fragility of memory. To me, the detailed eye represents what you might vividly remember about someone - what lines represent forgotten details, like what clothes they were wearing. Although, in my own work, it tends to be the opposite. A person's eye would be a very personal memory that not everyone could relate to, so in fact this might be where my image fades out, whereas the clothes and other more generic details I would depict in a more detailed way as these are familiar items that everyone has seen and can relate to. This would be the case with other material items such as phones, mp3 players, toys etc. that most people own and see every day, so I would depict these items in detail or as photographs, unlike faces which are personal and recognisable to less people so I would leave these blank.