"There's always colour going on... it's always different..."
Nicholas Romeril was born in Jersey in 1967. He became a professional artist in 1987 and had a close association with the Britart scene, attending Camberwell College of Art and Design and sharing a warehouse studio with Damien Hirst.
"When I was living in London I was painting cityscapes with lots of people, he says. But I also wanted to paint the skies, just because they were the most natural thing I could see in London.”
"So when I first came back to Jersey I often positioned myself high on the Island and looked out over large areas; I painted skyscapes and cloud formations."
Like so many Islanders, Nicholas was drawn inexorably back by the pull of the sea, the climate and the landscape. For Nicholas in particular, it was the intense, ever-shifting light that also called him home.
He describes how so much of his work is shaped by his life in the Island:
"I create paintings, sculptures and prints which are about my situation. They are about the sense of being here and the way the light and the weather affects what I’m looking at."
Nicholas Romeril has regular exhibitions in both Jersey and London and his artwork hangs in corporate and private collections in Europe, North America and the Far East.
As well as making his own works, Nicholas is a lecturer on the Degree, Foundation, and Extended Diploma Art and Design courses at Jersey's Highlands School of Art.
In his busy and intense creative life, Nicholas finds relaxation and escape with his family and the simple pleasures of his Island home.
"We’re quite an active family; we love swimming in the sea - it’s so clean, so fresh and invigorating. And I do a lot of walking. I walk every day, because no matter when you go it’s always different, I’ve never seen it the same."
Nicholas is also a passionate fisherman, with a knack for preparing his own fresh fish dishes - bass, turbot and his favourite: mackerel.
"You can never beat pan-fried mackerel with some good Jersey butter. Fillet it, add salt, pepper and a little bit of flour, then flash fry it with some olive oil and Jersey butter. Add a bit of mayonnaise and it’s just beautiful - all the family love it."
Still, it is the light and colour of the sea, the sky and the rich landscape that always inspires Nicholas Romeril.
"There’s often a moment at the beginning or the end of the day, especially on bright sunny days, where the colour is intensified.”
"You have these beautiful pink rocks against the vivid green, sometimes with turquoise blue and the yellow sand. You have intense, long, deep, dark shadows with this ping of light that sort of touches things."
For Nicholas Romeril, Jersey is a home, a workplace and an endlessly inspiring study. The Island is at the heart of every part of his life.
"I try to refer to the essence of living on an island surrounded by the sea... my work is about the sense of being here... somehow celebrating what it is like to live in Jersey..."
Travel writer Christopher Somerville met up with Nicholas.
Jersey's magical seascapes and landscapes inspire a vibrant arts and crafts scene. Christopher Somerville goes gallery spotting.
It is dark when I arrive at Nicholas Romeril’s farmhouse. The painter and his family come out in response to my knock, and Nicholas fends off their two excitable dogs as he steers me towards the studio where he creates his celebratory paintings inspired by Jersey’s ever-changing shapes and colours.
You’d hardly guess that Nicholas’s studio was a barn only a couple of years ago. ‘Oh, I just put in some windows and some light,’ he smiles casually. In fact there’s been a lot of subtle thought expended on how to catch the light and make the most of the barn’s space since the Jersey-born painter and his young family moved into his ancestral farmhouse a year or two ago. ‘It’s wonderful to walk into the studio every day,’ says Nicholas of the place where he creates his detailed, intense paintings of the coast of his native island.
There’s a Pre-Raphaelite attention to detail in his sensual depictions of rows of pebbles tossed by the tide into a rock crack, or big purple shadows pouring down the side of a sand dune like oil or seawater. ‘I was walking on the boulders at Rozel Bay when it struck me that this must be an ant’s perspective of walking across the sand. My paintings of the dunes are more about memory and experience, the fun I had as a child running on the beach.’
As a young painter, Nicholas had to leave Jersey to study and make a name for himself. He hooked up with Damien Hirst and other young tearaways of the London arts scene in the studios they all shared in Minet Road in the Stockwell area of the UK’s capital city. ‘We had this great big warehouse, no heating, very little light. We really had the idea this was going to be the new artistic school of London.’
After a few years amid the bright lights, Nicholas felt the pull of his native island. ‘I started painting nature and skies in London, but I became frustrated because I could never see a whole vista. When I came back here, at first I spent all my time on the headlands looking up at the sky; then I started looking down and noticing shadows and shapes. I became fascinated with the period of time, one or two seconds, when the sun’s low and for a moment the shadows look more real than the object that projects them.’
Jersey now seems fuller than ever before of creative artists with plenty to say through their art – the gorgeous fluid paintings of Ian Rolls, for example, in which land and sea seem to heave to the same rhythm, or June Gould’s stylish ceramic jugs and bowls, or the photographs of Sheila Birch which explore the meeting places of sea, sky and land. The Jersey Arts Trust’s new complex of workshops at the Parish Works in St Helier, and the Harbour Gallery in St Aubin run by the Art in the Frame Foundation are two excellent examples of how Jersey is backing its artists in very practical ways, with studio space, with exposure and with grants
‘That most definitely should be happening,’ says Nicholas Romeril with passion. ‘We ought to be investing in local artists and art. We need to keep stimulating the island’s art and culture. Because, believe me, we’ve got fantastic quality here, people who are worthy of being national figures.’
www.nicholasromeril.com