Nancy Collantine
Recent exhibitions include The Pearls and the Oyster, Birley Studios, Preston, The Landscape – three person show with Comme Ça Gallery and The Cabinet of Fancy, Terrace Gallery, Huddersfield and A bell is a cup until it is struck, Bloc Projects in Sheffield.
Established Mura Ma, independent Art Space and Gallery in January 2023.
Finalist in the Beep Painting Prize 2022
Recipient of the Castlefield Gallery Development Award 2022, Manchester Open
Turps Correspondence Course 2020-2022
Artist Statement
Painting gives me access to thoughts and ideas that are locked into my lived experience – themes that come up in the forms or relationships within the work that I connect to power and agency, freedom and restraint. Discovery is part of my process and I might start out from a drawing of a place, or a thought about something, but the painting has other ideas and I have to lose sight of the original intention in order to discover it’s truth – so much so, that after it is made, I don’t know how I made the work.
It was whilst living in Australia from 2016-17 that I returned to study and develop my art practice, it was here I became immersed in Australian landscape painting, inspired by paintings by Nongirrna Marawili, Tony Tuckson, Brett Whiteley, Aida Tomescu and John Olsen. Australian landscape painting and its unique connection to place and spirit has been a significant influence on my practice and my interest in human connection to landscape.
Biography
Nan Collantine lives and works not far from Manchester in the north west of England.
From 2020-22 Nan took part in the Turps Correspondence Course to develop her painting and drawing practice. In 2019 she started Dez Rez Projects, a DIY exhibition production that organises opportunities for emerging artists outside of the gallery system and in 2020 opened the Northern Atelier studio with the aim of offering artist-led opportunities to the local community and further afield. This has recently led to her opening a permanent space, Mura Ma in Stockport, Greater Manchester. She is also an arts writer and reviewer for Northern Soul magazine.
A former student of an alternative art school, the Islingon Mill Art Academy, Nan has exhibited in group shows around the North West and London and is the recipient of the Castlefield Gallery Artist Professional Development Award as part of the Manchester Open 2022. She works from her studio in a former textile mill in Marple, Greater Manchester.